


All The World Is Green

by littleblackfox



Category: Captain America (Movies), Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Shades of Grey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-01 05:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10181924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox
Summary: I had everything. I had the truth. A horrible, terrible truth, one that I never wanted to learn but did anyway. And I had Steve.I loved him. I loved him and it was the fiercest, brightest, most beautiful thing I had ever felt. Like looking to the hazy grey sunrise and seeing a burst of red light up the sky. And I thought maybe he loved me too. At least until he killed me.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violetbronte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetbronte/gifts).



> Written for the lovely Violetbronte, who won me in the Fandom Trumps Hate auction.  
> She asked for a Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde au. I hope you like it, Kate!
> 
> Shades of Grey is a dystopian society au that exists several hundred years after the collapse of our own society. Social hierarchy is governed by what colours citizens can see, from the lowest class greys to the highest class ultraviolet.  
> Colours are used as medicine, intoxicants, and on some occasions, poison.
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com) where I'll be reblogging endless pictures of Sebastian Stan and crying over commas.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had everything. I had the truth. A horrible, terrible truth, one that I never wanted to learn but did anyway. And I had Steve.  
> I loved him. I loved him and it was the fiercest, brightest, most beautiful thing I had ever felt. Like looking to the hazy grey sunrise and seeing a burst of red light up the sky. And I thought maybe he loved me too. At least until he killed me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the lovely Violetbronte, who won me in the Fandom Trumps Hate auction.  
> She asked for a Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde au. I hope you like it, Kate!
> 
> Shades of Grey is a dystopian society au that exists several hundred years after the collapse of our own society. Social hierarchy is governed by what colours citizens can see, from the lowest class greys to the highest class ultraviolet.  
> Colours are used as medicine, intoxicants, and on some occasions, poison.
> 
> This will be updating twice a week (wednesday/saturday), since the chapters are shorter than my usual epic word spills.
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com) where I'll be reblogging endless pictures of Sebastian Stan and crying over commas.

Looking back, maybe I should have stayed to watch the cartoons.  
Yeah. I could have stayed in my seat and watched cartoons. Tried to persuade Dolores Maraschino to marry me and had a long, boring career as a Foreman at the Dockyards.  
Fuck, but that would have been dull.  
This, I guess, is as interesting a way to go as any, being slowly eaten alive by a Hydra.  
It isn’t all bad, I mean, aside from being digested over the course of a few weeks by a carnivorous plant - animal - _thing_.  
If I could do it all over and choose how to end my unfortunately short life, this isn’t the way I’d ask for, believe me. At the very least I’d have made more of an effort to get my cherry popped. Not that I didn’t, but. Well.  
It was worth it though. Better than a long, dull life in service to SHIELD and an indifferent wife.  
Because for a while there I had everything. I had the truth. A horrible, terrible truth, one that I never wanted to learn but did anyway. And I had Steve.  
I loved him. I loved him and it was the fiercest, brightest, most beautiful thing I had ever felt. Like looking to the hazy grey sunrise and seeing a burst of red light up the sky. And I thought maybe he loved me too. At least until he killed me.  
He said he was sorry, and that has to count for something, right?  
There’s no shame in dying for love. But there is bitter, bitter disappointment.


	2. Carmine Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skinny, five foot and spare change. Big eyes that I’d bet you a weeks credits were blue, not that I could tell. Long lashes, too. But damn it was his lips, y’know, like cherries they were. A single splash of colour in the dimly lit theatre.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky meets Steve for the first tiime, and gets socked in the jaw for his troubles.  
> (This will not be the last time he gets a punch from Steve)
> 
> Thanks to the Squid Squad for making me write instead of lying on the floor and wailing.

So, let me start from the beginning. Before the truth, before Steve, before the slow and agonising death.  
Dolores Maraschino, what did I ever see in her? Nothing, really. She was a fellow red from a well regarded family and my folks were pushing me to settle down. The Maraschino’s ran the biggest Dockyard in Egremont Russet, second only the one in Woolbrook Russet across the bay, much to their chagrin. Their eldest daughter hadn’t been on the market long, and already had a half-dozen red families chasing after her fortune, including my own. It was pretty much a tie between me, James Buchanan Barn (formerly Red Barn, but the Red part got dropped a few hundred years back for being impossibly _gauche_ ) and Donnie Rufous, whose folks had been saving credits since before he was even conceived and could easily manage the three thousand set as dowry. Me, I could barely make the odd five credits here and there to buy her a box of chocolates or pay someone to write her some poetry.  
Not that we were poor, you understand. Just that. Well. I maybe had a reputation for being reckless and getting myself into fights. And getting into fights meant fines. So a guy gives a girl some trouble and you politely take him around the corner to rearrange his face? Goodbye last week's wages, you know what I mean? Doesn’t matter if he’s asking for it, and you never take a dame up on the offer of going halves with the payment, that shit ain’t right.

So. I manage to keep my nose clean long enough to offer to take Dolores down to Carmine Island at the weekend and she accepts. Under strict instructions that I keep at least three feet from her at all times, lest I or anyone else get ideas about any kind of serious commitment going on.  
So I get all dressed up in my best (itchiest, most uncomfortable) suit, put a half pint of pomade in my hair and we go to the seaside.  
We take the metro, and I help her onto the covered cart as it slows down at the turn onto Russet bridge, tossing a couple of credits into the bucket on the bench next to the drayman.  
Yeah, of course I covered her fare, that’s what a gentleman does. I tried to convince her that taking the metro is part of the charm of a grand day out, watching the world go by as you travel at a pace slightly faster than walking. Unless the horse and grey are coming to the end of their shift, that is. Then someone gets the job of poking the grey to see if he’s mulch or not.  
Don’t think she bought it.  
We ride the Cyclone, though obviously we don’t sit together. I end up three rows back with some unfortunate orange guy trying his damnedest to woo a green. Poor bastard.  
I show Dolores a good time, buy her a hot dog and a soda. I even manage to win her a stuffed teddy bear in the shooting gallery and she doesn't toss in the trash, so things are looking promising. Promising enough for her to allow a pet name, so I settle on Dottie. Then we end the day with a trip to the movie theatre by the funfair.  
Once a week the theaters show a couple of cartoons. It’s free to get in, and the cartoons are always pretty funny, usually about the Pinks trying to get their shit together long enough to start a war with us and getting their asses blown up. The downside is the props they make you watch first; shorts about how all our labours and sacrifices are for the greater good, how we’re all kept safe by SHIELD and it’s our duty to protect and serve. You know, the usual.

Most folks just sit quietly during the props. Maybe make a little time with their sweethearts (no such luck, Dottie insists on an empty seat between us) or plan for the week ahead or, I don’t know, stare into space for a while. Hell, maybe some folks even watch the damn things.  
So anyway, there’s this fella who takes umbrage with having to sit through a few films about collecting scrap colour for central processing to earn extra credits, and starts yelling at the projectionist to just skip to the cartoons.  
Yeah, like the guy can even do that. messing with the props is a ticket on the Night Train for Rehabilitation.  
So we all sit in awkward silence while this fella, and I can see from his lapel pin that he’s a yellow, so no surprise there, yellows are always shooting their mouths off, bitches and moans through the props. Then this little guy sat a few rows in front of me leans forward and yells at him to shut up. Which goes down about as well as can be expected.  
So the next thing you know, asshole yellow is on his feet, suggesting to this guy that they take it outside, and the dumb punk agrees.  
I get a good look at the idiot as the yellow grabs him by the shirt and drags him to the fire exit. Grey, according to his lapel pin, which isn’t good news for him. Skinny, five foot and spare change. Big eyes that I’d bet you a weeks credits were blue, not that I could tell. Long lashes, too. But damn it was his lips, y’know, like cherries they were. A single splash of colour in the dimly lit theatre.  
And. Well, like I said. Maybe I had a reputation. It was one of the things (heck, the thing) keeping me from a clear path to being the next Mr Maraschino. That and a deep, unshakable notion that maybe I should be able to marry someone I could stand the sight of.  
So I make my apologies to Dottie and tell her I’m going after them. She flips her lid and tells me that if I walk out that theatre then I can say goodby to any chance with her, that she’ll go right home and say yes to Donnie Rufous. I don’t even think twice, if I’m honest, I just tell her fair enough and leave.  
And yeah, it got me killed, but I don’t regret it.  
Well.  
Not regret.  
Rue and lament, maybe.

I find the grey and the yellow in the alley out back of the theatre, and obviously the yellow bastard, who’s twice as big and looks like he’s never lacked for a decent meal, is beating seven shades of crap out of the grey. The grey is putting up a fight, and I can’t help but admire the little punk getting a few good hits in. At least until he winds up getting knocked into the trash cans lined up by the fire exit. He’s too dumb to stay down, but has enough sense to grab one of the lids and try to defend himself.  
The blood on his mouth is a single source of colour in the mire, and the sight of it has me rattled.  
It doesn't take much to turn the fight around, I grab the guy by the back of his shirt and spin him around, give him a black eye. He throws a punch and I duck, and break his nose for the trouble. A swift kick up the ass sends him to the cobbles, and I turn back to check on the grey.  
“You like getting punched?” I asked him.  
“Fuck you, I had him on the ropes.” The grey spits at me, wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his hand.  
Now that gives me pause. Greys are the lowest ranked citizens, can’t see shit. A grey never talks back. Hell, they’re not even supposed to talk at all unless directly questioned.  
I couldn’t help but grin at him.  
“Settle down now, babydoll. There’s no need for that.”  
And that’s when the grey takes a swing at me. It’s a good one too, right in the jaw. He takes off while I’m rubbing my cheek and checking that I’ve not lost a tooth, so I don’t even get to ask him if he wants to maybe go for a walk on the beach or split a sundae or something. I mean, he already socked me one, so what’s the worst that could happen.

I mean, I wasn’t gonna ask the guy to marry me (that would happen later, and get me another punch in the face. For a little guy he’s got a hell of a right hook), and my folks would throw a fit if I brought home a grey instead of the Maraschino’s eldest daughter.  
But. I liked him. He was cute, and a firecracker, and I would never be bored with him around, y’know?  
And it wasn’t like two guys or a couple of dames was _illegal_ or nothing, there wasn’t anything in the rules about it. And it did happen every once in a while, just most folks frowned on it because what was the point? If you weren’t improving your social status for your offspring by marrying up the spectrum, or bolstering your finances with a well-remunerated marrying down the spectrum, then what was the actual point?  
But it was a moot point, because the grey was long gone, and some charming member of the community had called for the nearest chromatic. For all I know it had been Dolores, but there was a big enough crowd of people gathered at the end of the alleyway by then that it could have been anyone.  
So I get pulled in for questioning, melting pomade trickling down the back of my shirt and my palms sweating. Because it turns out the yellow I’d kicked in the ass was the son of some bigshot named Canary who shared his boys propensity for mouthing off loudly (and how is that for irony?) while the people around him look embarrassed. Hell, if I hadn’t already been in so much trouble I’d have kicked him up the ass too, and screw the consequences.  
Not that I wasn’t already royally screwed.

Every town has a fair number of chromatics, people of age whose colour perception is above seventy five percent. It’s a cushy deal in some ways, you’re in a position of authority, able to assign credits, levy fines and ensure the smooth running of society. Also you get to make yourself a general pain in the ass and harass people for the supposed greater good. Any shit gets stirred up, the nearest chromatic takes care of it, and it’s the luck of the draw if you get someone fairly reasonable who just gives you a fine and tells you not to do it again, or if it’s some mouthy asshole who doesn’t take kindly to his precious son being knocked out.  
And before you ask, no it doesn’t matter that the guy I punched had been kicking up a stink in the theater, or that he dragged a grey outside for a beating.  
So Canary senior commandeers the manager's office in the theatre and I get chewed out for half an hour. He takes one look at my ration book, sees all the other fines and citations in there, and decides that I need to be made an example of.  
I get sent back to my folks with my tail between my legs and a five hundred credit fine for disturbance of the peace. It still leaves me with seven hundred and forty six credits, enough to cover my five hundred credit minimum requirement for full residency, but loses me my travelling rights and afternoon tea rations.  
If that wasn’t punishment enough (and seriously, I only punched the guy a couple of times) it came with a three month reassignment to Jonagold to learn humility.  
All in all it was not how I had expected my day to end.


	3. The Train to Jonagold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are two trains, the one that crosses the Russet once a week as it huffs and steams along the coast from Blackstone peninsula down to Orange country. They say you can see the White City from the train, the Triskelion rising up from the sea.  
> And there’s the Night Train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! Most of the town names in this fic are apple varieties.  
> I listened to a lot of songs about trains when writing this. A LOT. For reasons that will become apparent later. In the meantime, if you wanted to listen to something while reading, I recommend  
> I often dream of Trains - Robyn Hitchcock  
> Long black train - Richard Hawley  
> Down there by the train - Tom Waits
> 
> Special thanks to CobaltMoony for making me write when I didn''t want to

The folks were understandably ticked off. Not just that I’d blown it with the Maraschino family, but that I was being reassigned, which was something of a stain on the Barn name.  
My father in particular offered up several carefully considered lectures on how much he and his forebears had invested in me, and that my grandfather hadn’t worked his fingers to the bone earning enough to marry his way out of being a grey just to have me throw it all away. The lecture on atoning for my future children and grandchildren that my mother sniffed and sighed her way through was one I could have gladly lived without.  
They were somewhat mollified by having enough foresight to produce other children, my younger sister Rebecca (a year younger than me and already of a half-promise to Joey Cardinal) and Winnie (who hadn’t come of age but showed strong signs of red and some potential for blue).  
Becca at least took pity on me during the lecture and slipped me a swatch of bottle green. Not strong enough to get me saturated, but enough to take the edge off.  
I listened politely, nodded in agreement and tried not to make a fuss when my father complained that it was his own fault for not investing more in a suitable donor for my conception.  
I mean, it’s not uncommon, paying someone a few hundred credits to ensure your offspring has a strong colour perception. There’s nothing in the rules against it, presumably because no one thought it would be necessary to write ‘When getting pregnant, please use your own generative organs, rather than paying for someone else's’. It’s not like getting someone else to write your poetry for you because you can’t rhyme for shit.  
Maybe it is, I don’t know.  
So anyway. I got grounded for the remainder of the weekend, and sent to my room to Think On What I Had Done.  
And also pack my belongings as I’d be taking the train to Jonagold Monday morning.

Jonagold. That was the biggest insult.  
Although officially all colours are equal in the great spectrum, in reality individual towns lean towards one colour over the others. Living in Egremont Russet, things were a little skewed towards reds. We’d get the cuts of named animal meat and rendered fat in our weekly rations, rather than the slices of unspecified meatloaf and blended fats that didn’t necessarily but almost definitely contained people. We’d get the flour cut with chalk rather than bonemeal, paraffin candles rather than the smoky, pungent tallow ones and occasionally extra sugar lumps.  
And the colours tend to stick together, not just to keep a close eye on each others dynastic intentions or trade gossip over the other colours. You seldom made friends outside of your own colour and you definitely didn’t court outside it, unless you were making a clear play to move up the spectrum, which had it’s own problems. The insular nature of each colour made it hard to work your way upwards, and was only allowed so future generations could watch you fall.  
So life in a yellow leaning town was likely to be a bit different.

My father (okay, so in light of recent revelations, not the best term for him, but as the man who raised me, I figure I owe him that much) walked me to the train station after a strained goodbye with the rest of the family. I reminded my Ma that I was only leaving for a few months, which it turned out was the wrong thing to say. Becca gave me some seed cake for the journey and made me promise to write.  
My father shook my hand and left me at the train station, and went home without a glance back.  
They say before Insight there were things called cars lining the streets, that you never had to wait to go someplace, you just got into a car and it took you there. It’s sounds like flim-flam to me, along with all the other stuff - floating cities and flying machines and theaters that you kept in your pocket. If any of it was true, it was hundreds of years ago now, and the only things we have left from those times are the trains.  
They’re not the same trains of course. Those ones were powered by lightning that lived in the copper, at least that’s what they say. The trains we have now are from way before, heavy and huge and made of iron, powered by wood or charcoal or black, oily rocks dug out of the earth.  
There are two trains, the one that crosses the Russet once a week as it huffs and steams along the coast from Blackstone peninsula down to Orange country. They say you can see the White City from the train, the Triskelion rising up from the sea.  
And there’s the Night Train. That runs once a month, taking folks who have allowed their credit rating to drop below zero to rehabilitation.

I show the indifferent grey in the station booth my ticket and make my way to the platform to wait. There are a couple of other people already there, a pair of blue ladies with their travelling cases, maybe on a vacation or off to visit family, and a twitchy looking yellow pacing up and down the platform. His clothes are crumpled and stained. He gives me a nervous smile and asks if I have anything to eat.  
I give him Becca’s seed cake, which he says tastes awful, but finishes off anyway.  
Becca is a terrible cook, I almost feel sorry for Joey Cardinal.  
The yellow wipes his hand on his trousers and holds it out.  
“Scott Lemon, pleased to meet you.”  
I take his hand and give it a shake. “James Barn, pleased to be met.”  
Scott wastes no time. “Where are you headed?”  
“Jonagold,” I manage not to grimace, since he’s a yellow an’ all. “You?”  
Scott shifts nervously, glancing up and down the platform, and shows me his ticket.  
The Night Train.  
“I skipped out on my ride,” he mutters.  
Well, that explains the way he looks. The last Night Train was scheduled to depart Friday, he would have shown his ticket at the booth on the way in, then camped out on the platform until any train but the one he was supposed to take arrived.  
He must have been on the platform at _night_. The poor bastard must have been terrified he’d be snatched up by Howlers or Night Gaunts or any of the prowling things filled with teeth and hunger that lurked in the dark.  
“What did you do?” I gasped.  
Scott shrugged. “I was a bookkeeper for a reclaimers yard, traded with mudlarks mainly.”  
I nodded, there was good scavenging to be had on the tideline, though you had to keep your wits about you. If you thought Hydra were bad, Krakens were worse.  
“There were irregularities in the accounts. I thought it was an error but when I brought it up with the chromatic…” Scott shrugs. “No one was supposed to find out.”  
A week ago I might have considered reporting him for the extra credits. I hope not. Instead I nodded and gestured to the railway tracks.  
“I wouldn’t mind the company.”  
Scott grins at me, nervous and relieved.

It took half the day to get to Jonagold, stopping at New Harlequin and Persimmon where a handful of people boarded and very few alighted. Like Egremont Russet, the towns were on the coast, and the whole journey we had been able to catch the occasional glimpse of the ocean over on our left as we made our way north, though neither of us could really distinguish it from the hazy grey of the sky.  
Scott was good company though, sharing news of the Freedom Fighters that had been sabotaging the railways further south. There was even talk of the Great South Wall being down in places, though the North Wall just up from Jonagold was still standing, I had heard.  
For my part I told him how I ended up reassigned, which at least made him laugh, even if I had kicked another yellow up the ass.  
“He give you that?” Scott asked, pointing to my cheek.  
I patted it and shook my head. It still ached when I moved my jaw, but after the first red flush faded away I couldn’t see it anymore. If Scott could, then I guess the bruise had gone yellow, and soon enough would be nothing but a memory and a slight clicking whenever I swallowed.  
“Nah, that was the grey,” I laughed.  
“Seriously? You come to the rescue and you get that for your troubles?” Scott winces. “Hardly worth it.”  
I shook my head and rubbed at the tender spot. “Yeah, it was worth it,” I insisted.  
Scott looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was.

We agree that when we reached Jonagold Scott would come with me. We figure out a basic cover story, and decide to play the rest of it by ear, maybe get him some help on the black market. I grab my bag from the luggage hold and we climb down from the train as it hisses and steams like a great iron horse.  
On the platform there is a short, excitable yellow waiting for me. He bounces up and down and waves as we walk towards him, Scott doing his best to hide behind me.  
“Hey, you’re the red, yeah? Barn, right? Pleased to meet you, friend.” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer and keeps on talking. So yeah, a yellow through and through.  
“I’m Luis, welcome to Jonagold.” He grabs my hand and gives it a shake. “Jasper Citrus, he’s our Mayor? Well, he told me to come meet you, give you the tour, show you the sights. Now I know what you’re thinking, Jasper? What kind of name is that for a yellow state, right? Well, dude was orange, married his way into the yellow, looking to purify his colour, y’know? Cause that shit matters to some folk. Me, I don’t give a fuck what colour you are, we’re all on the same spectrum, you feel?”  
I nod dumbly, and the cover story Scott and I came up with kind of… dissolves in the face of Luis and his enthusiasm.  
“Oh hey, who’s your buddy here?”  
_Fuck_.  
“Uh. This is Scott, we met on the train.” I offer weakly.  
Luis shakes Scott by the hand. “Nice to meet you, you in town for long?”  
Scott fails to say anything, and Luis slowly takes in his rumpled appearance.  
_Shit shit shit_.  
Luis gives us a slow smile. “Always good to meet another yellow.” He nods to himself. “Listen, I got a real comfortable couch, you’re gonna love it. Give yourself a couple of days and we can figure out what you wanna do with yourself, yeah?”  
Scotts knees nearly give way with relief, and he nods his head frantically.  
“Sounds great, yeah,” he flusters.  
“Alright, dude, settle down before you injure yourself,” Luis says quietly before throwing an arm each around our shoulders and leading us out of the station.  
The grey in the booth doesn’t want to see our passes, and waves Luis off when he approaches. Luis grins and leads us out to Jonagold.


	4. Jonagold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve never been to Egremont Russet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky meets an old friend. Truths are told, as are lies.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Moony. For keeping me writing and more importantly keeping me smiling.

There is a horse and trap waiting for us outside the train station. Luis pats the horse, a large but friendly looking beast with a glossy dark coat but for the pale stripe down its nose and shaggy fur covered hooves.  
“This here is Ignacio, say hello Nacho,” Luis scratches the horse under the chin and it makes a happy little rumbling sound.  
The trap is a sturdy-looking little two wheeled cart with a bench seat for two people to sit comfortably, though the three of us manage fine, Luis in the middle with me and Scott either side of him. With nowhere to put my bag I keep it on, at least if I get tossed out the cart I’ll have something soft to land on.  
Luis takes up the reins and gives them a shake, and the horse shifts and grumbles before taking off at a leisurely pace down the cobbled street.  
Cobbles, I remind you, so don’t go thinking it was comfortable.  
“See, Jonagold is a port town, so most of the greys around here work down the docks. And the rendering plant, of course, you don’t wanna be downwind from there. You folks come from inland?”  
I shake my head. “Egremont Russet, Mudlarks and shipping.”  
“Sapphire on the Hill, shipping and toshers. The groundshakes bring up good salvage,” Scott adds.  
Luis nods, leading us down the street towards town. “You guys ever work off rations?” he asks quietly.  
Scott looks nervous. I’ve never done any black market trading myself, but it was everywhere if you knew how to look. The chromatics had tried countless times to stamp it out, but where there was a need, there were people who would find a way.  
“Well, you ever gotta need, you let me know, I can hook you up. Very reasonable prices too.”  
Luis drops a rein long enough to reach over and give Scott a shake, and I hope that I haven’t gotten the guy into more trouble.  
We fall into silence as we reach the town itself, divided, as all towns are, between the tightly packed rows of terraced houses where the greys lived and the sprawling colour communities radiating out from town hall.  
The hall is the focal point of each town. It’s where the canteen is as well as the location for the sunday town meetings. The building must have been impressive once, before Insight, though the top two floors had long since caved in, the front facade with its imposing columns was still standing, the colour wheel flag atop the Night Bell flapping idly in the breeze between them.  
There is a man walking past the columns, and Luis calls out to him. He stops, and I can see the moment where he seriously considers booking it, then the slightest sag of his shoulders as he gives in to his fate.  
“Luis, what’s up?” he calls, walking over to meet us.  
“Guys, this here is Sam, he’s a blue chromatic here.”  
Sam gives me a nod. “You must be the troublesome red I’ve heard about.”  
Luis puts his arm around my shoulders. “Ain't trouble, just misguided, you know what I’m saying.”  
I pat Luis’ hand. Yeah, he’s alright.  
“Who’s the tic-tac?” Sam points to Scott.  
“My cousin,” Luis answers quickly. “Staying for a couple of days to catch up before heading south.”  
Sam doesn’t look convinced. “Alright, good to meet you both.”  
He gives us a nod and turns away.  
“Is he always so…” Scott asks under his breath.  
“Yup. Don’t worry, that’s just Sam,” Luis reassures him. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”

The rest of town is mostly farmland tended to by the greys. Luis takes us up to the docks, and from our bench seat points out the workers loading and unloading the steam packets shored up there.  
He takes us further north to the mouth of the river Cobalt where the rendering plant is. The smell makes my eyes water and Luis’ descriptions of the rendering process makes my stomach turn. Scott looks a little green around the gills too.  
“I’ve seen worse places,” Luis reassures us. “The foreman, Phil, he’s a green. Nice guy really, doesn’t make the greys work the mills if it’s family in the mulch.”  
“That’s nice of him,” Scott mutters, his voice strained.  
“Yeah, it is. Most of the render - candles, lamp oil, luncheon meat, fat, that kind of thing, gets loaded onto steamers and sent down the coast down to White City. Plus the by-catch, clothes, boots, bonemeal, salvage. You know how it is.”  
“Can we go somewhere else,” Scott whines, and Luis gives the reins a shake.  
We circle around and head back to the town hall, and Luis directs the horse towards the red sector.  
“Okay, so me and Scotty are gonna head back to mine and figure out a plan of action. You good from here?”  
I nod and climb down from the cart, my knees wobbling from being cramped up for so long. “I’ll see you before you move on, yeah?” I ask Scott. Not just because I’ll miss his company, but to make sure he’s not just shaken down for credits and mulched. Not that I think Luis would pull a stunt like that.  
Well. Back then I wasn’t sure. Now I know he wouldn’t.  
“You should see Nat on your way over. Natasha, she’ll set you up with work and all that.”  
“Okay, how will I recognise her?”  
Luis grins at me. “Oh, you’ll know her!”  
He shakes the reins and clicks to the horse, and the cart pulls away.

I adjust my bag, which has been weighing heavily on my shoulder for the whole afternoon tour and slope towards the red houses, looking for the one that I’d been allocated. There’s a woman waiting outside it, a modest semi detached little place, it’s door painted red like all the others in the sector.  
She has red hair. Natural red, not one of those plant dyes, and it burns my eyes like a sodium flare. She looks briefly startled at the way I wince and rub at my eyes.  
“You must be Barn. Nothing on your record about being high perceiving.”  
I shake my head like I’ve got water in my ears. “You must be Natasha.”  
She nods. “Yes, I must. So what percentage are you?”  
I slide the bag off my arm and pointedly rub at my shoulder. “Seventy one percent,” I mutter sourly.  
Yeah, it still bothers me that I was four lousy percent out from being a chromatic in my test when I came of age. I should have trusted my guts more. Natasha lets out a thoughtful hum.  
“And what did you do back home?”  
I couldn’t help but frown at her, she should know all this already. I stick with the truth in case it’s some sort of test. “Line manager.”  
She nods like it’s new information. “Well, here’s you’ll be a town clerk. You’ll be expected to check the records of council meetings, go through the town histories and expunge any data that is not in keeping with current laws as well as perform minor administrative duties. Think you can handle all that?” She smirks at me. It’s very unsettling.  
I give her my best nonchalant shrug. “Sure. When do I start?”  
She snorts. “Tomorrow morning, the newsroom is closed Mondays.”  
“Newsroom?”  
“The record office is in the backroom of the Herald.” She points to a building that might have been impressive once, or at least tall, near the town hall. “The newsroom is run by a green, he takes Mondays off.”  
Her smirk makes me feel uneasy. “Are there any other town clerks?” I ask, with a sinking sensation in my guts.  
“You’ll be the first,” she looks so damned pleased with herself.  
“So. What? I’ve gotta go through four hundred years of town meetings?” I laugh. She doesn’t laugh with me. “But that's… That’s gonna take years! I’m only here for three months.”  
She gives me a pitying look. “Sure you are.” and starts walking towards the purple sector.  
“I mean it,” I call after her. “I’ve got a ticket.”  
But she keeps walking.

The Night Bell chimes it’s thirty minute warning before sunset, and I let myself into my new house.  
It’s furnished, at least. There’s oil in the lamps and clean sheets on the bed, as you’d expect as a credited citizen. There’s not much on offer in the pantry, a few jars of pickles and some flour that’s probably mostly bone meal. There is a crockery pot of fat in the coldest corner, though I’m reluctant to touch it. At least the grates have been raked out and seasoned wood stacked by the fireplaces.  
Whichever grey had been on duty had done the best with what they had, but still.  
I light up a couple of lanterns and make a fire, setting the cast iron kettle on a trivet over the flames to make some coffee. Dinner is a handful of stale crackers and a cup of bitter, unsweetened chicory coffee.  
I unpack my belongings and keep a lantern lit in the bedroom window to ward off the things in the darkness, and go to bed.  
It’s a long time before I get any sleep.

In the morning I go down to the post office to send a telegram to my family, letting them know I’ve arrived safely. The post office is run by a brother and sister, twins. There is something slightly unsettling about them. Wanda is a red, her hair, her lapel pin and her coat are the same synapse - jarring shade of drying blood. Pietro is an ultraviolet. Having twins with differing colours is unusual enough, having them on opposite ends of the spectrum is downright creepy.  
While Wanda dictates my message and takes the five credits it costs me her brother taps it out on the coder, his fingers a blur as he breaks down my greetings to the family into dots and dashes.  
There are rumours about ultraviolets, that they can see beyond the spectrum, that they can look at a flower and tell you how long it has been facing the sun.  
I try not to dwell on fanciful ideas, but he is so pale next to his sister, who’s lips are so bright that they give me a headache, that he is almost a ghost.  
I debate writing to Dolores, and decide against it. That ship has definitely sailed.  
With no reason to put it off any longer, I go over to the newsroom.

Newsroom was probably putting it a little generously.  
The Herald is published weekly, the wafer thin sheets of paper fed through a huge iron hand-cranked printing press. The letterman an older green gentleman who introduces himself as Abraham when I knock on the door and explain myself.  
“Ah yes, Natasha said you’d be coming,” he held the door open and waves me in. “The records, yes? With any luck you’ll have caught up by the turn of the century.”  
I don’t laugh at his little joke.  
“Well,” he continues. “It’s just myself and Stephen here. I write the copy and he assists my with the typesetting, printing and provides illustration.” Abraham takes off his wire rimmed glasses and gives them a polish. “He is trouble, but good at his job. I can only keep him from the Night Train for so long.” He shrugs. “What can you do?”  
“Well, I’ll be sure to keep out of your hair,” I promise.  
Abraham nods and directs the way into the newsroom.  
The grey from the movie theater is sat at a wooden desk by the window, sketching on a sheet of paper.  
“You,” I hiss.  
He straightens up and fixes me with an insolent glare. “I’m sorry, have we met before?” he growls. His voice is surprisingly deep.  
There is something under that glare, and it takes me a second to place it. _Panic_. What the hell would a red from Jonagold be doing all the way down in Egremont Russet? No way he could have gotten there and back without a ticket, and the only train a grey ever gets to ride is the Night Train.  
The greys gaze shifts between me and Abraham, and for a second I think he’s about to book it.  
And. Well. He is cute. So I shake my head.  
“My mistake,” I tell Abraham.  
The grey, Steve, relaxes almost imperceptibly and returns to his sketching.  
“Stephen, this is James Barn, he’s the new clerk.”  
Steve nods, but doesn’t make any attempt to be civil. There is a knock at the door and Abraham apologises before shuffling off to see who’s there.  
I take advantage of the moment of privacy and take a few steps closer to the desk.  
“How the hell did you get here? What were you doing back in Egremont Russet?”  
Steve clenches his jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve never been to Egremont Russet.”  
“Yes, you have!” I hissed. “I saw you, I saved your sorry ass from a beating.” I glance back to make sure that Abraham is still occupied at the door. “It cost me _five hundred_ credits and got me sent here for fuck knows how long.”  
Steve has the decency to look a little bit guilty.  
“No one asked you to come after me. I was fine, I didn’t need your help,” he blurts out.  
“It was you!” I say triumphantly. “How did you get here so fast? I know you didn’t take the train.”  
Steve scowls at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, you must be mistaken,” he says flatly.  
Before I can argue Abraham returns with a handful of papers, which he drops on Steve's desk.  
“Sort through these would you, there’s a good lad.”  
Steve mutters something noncommittal and starts shuffling through the papers. Abraham gestures to a door at the back of the newsroom.  
“This way,” he instructs cheerfully.

The records office is in a dimly lit room tucked into the furthest corner of the building. Abraham pulls open a set of heavy, moth eaten curtains, sending up clouds of dust and exposing a single grimy window. After a moment of coughing he cracks open the window and light spills into the gloom.  
There are stacks of papers everywhere, on the desk, on the chair, the shelves that line the rooms. They are arranged in haphazard, mouldering piles all over the floor. Several of the stacks brush against the ceiling.  
Abraham lights a lamp on the desk, turning the flame up. He pats a heavy, leather bound book on the desk. “I’m sure you are already familiar with the rules?”  
I nod, tugging the fabric of my shirt over my mouth so I can breathe without choking. I went to a good school, but education is still limited to basic arithmetic for keeping track of your credits and enough writing for working through the rulebook and copying out relevant passages. The faster you got through the rulebook, the sooner you finished formal education and I was pretty damned fast.  
Abraham gives the book an affectionate pat, sending up another cloud of dust. “I’ll leave you to your work,” he says softly, pulling the door closed behind him as he leaves.  
I take a minute to curse my lot before digging a rusted brazier out from under the desk and dragging it into the centre of the room. It takes a couple of tries to get it lit, but soon enough I have a fire crackling away while I go around the room looking for the oldest documents.  
I take a promising bundle of dry, yellowed sheets that crumble to dust in my hands, and after a minute of quiet debating (not, you understand, the implications of destroying documents hundreds of years old, but if I did _would I get away with it?_ ) I drop the papers in the brazier, a handful at a time to keep the fire from getting suffocated.  
By lunchtime I’m not even halfway through the decaying pile of documents, though I put a handful of the more intact ones aside for checking though later.  
I’m just clearing up when there’s a tap at the door. It opens before I even have the chance to respond and Steve pokes his head into the room, face scrunching up at the pungent smell of burning paper. The air is pretty thick too, even with the window open. He manages to tell me it’s lunch time before he succumbs to a coughing fit.  
I rush over to help him, but he shoves me away and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a compact. He flips it open, and I get a glimpse of a colour swatch as he holds the compact up to his face and breathes, slowly and deeply.  
“You have asthma,” I blurt out.  
Steve glares at me and snaps the compact shut. “Lunch,” he says and slams the door shut.

I’m covered in dust and soot and a few hundred years worth of town meetings, so I put a cover over the brazier and blow out the lamp, then go find the bathroom and try to get the worst of it off me. There is a silvered glass propped up against the sink, it’s edges browning, that I peer into as I scrub at my face. Though from the smirk Steve sends my way when I go back out to the newsroom I haven’t done a very good job of cleaning up.  
Abraham waves us towards the door, and we walk up the street to the canteen.  
Steve still keeps sending me wary looks, like he’s expecting me to rat him out, so I turn to Abraham and plaster a smile on my face.  
“So, Abraham,” I ask, surreptitiously rubbing smudges of soot off my nose. “What’s it like being able to see green?”  
It wasn’t an inappropriate question per se, just a little on the personal side.  
Abraham claps his hands together delightedly. “Oh, it’s wonderful, every day brings a new delight for the senses. The fresh new buds of spring, the rich grass of summer, the turning of the corn in the fields.” He sighs happily. “And the deep greens of leaves in winter. Really it’s quite a vision, such a tragedy you can’t experience it yourself.”  
I nod encouragingly. “Well, we get a fine display in autumn, and summer flowers too.”  
Abraham nods. “And yours is the colour of danger, of warning. You can spy a Hydra from a great distance, no doubt.”  
I nod in agreement. “Though you would do better with a Kraken.”  
“I would like to see the ocean some day,” Abraham sighs. “They say it is green when you go further out to sea. Unfortunately in the docks all the water is churned up with the passing of ships.”  
“Well, I’d have to take your word for it, sir.”  
Abraham gives me a shrewd look. “Do not fall prey to the belief that our sight divides us, young man. We are all blind, it is only together that we can see.”  
There’s not much you can say to that, so I don’t.

It is not written in the rule book that the townspeople should eat lunch together every day, it’s one of those unspoken rules that will land you in a world of shit if you ignore it. So at midday the people gather in the canteen, a room in the town hall dedicated to meals and weekly meetings. The food varies from town to town, but is basic and filling, since it was likely to be the only meal the greys would get each day, save whatever they got on the black market.  
We separated and made our way around the tables, fanned out in the colour wheel with the greys around the edge.  
I didn’t really know any of the town reds yet aside from Nat, who I wasn’t very inclined to sit near, and Wanda, who would give me a headache. There was a pretty redhead with an empty seat next to her, so I tapped her on the shoulder and asked if I could join her. It wasn’t that I was looking for a promise, but maybe I wanted to shake Steve up a little by talking to a pretty girl. Not that he noticed, or looked over once during the meal.  
The girl sniffs. “He’s trouble if you ask me, the sooner he’s on the Night Train the better,” she watches me closely while I definitely didn’t stare at the back of Steve’s head.  
“Hmm?” I remember my manners and flash her a smile, if only for show. “James Barn. What’s your name, darlin’?”  
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Pepper. Virginia Pepper.”  
“Good meet ya, Pep.”  
The nickname clearly irritates her and I resolve to use it until my dying day. Which unfortunately wasn’t long coming.  
“The whole family were nothing but trouble,” Pepper adds. “Mother died of the rot, father went to mustard.”  
I raise my eyebrows. Mustard is the deadliest poison we have and administered by SHIELD agents on the rarest of occasions. Pepper seems to take pleasure in my shock.  
“They say he was a Freedom Fighter, that he once even saw Nick Fury himself.”  
I sat back in my chair. Nick Fury was rumoured to be the leader of the rebellion against the chromatic order, people said he could see all the colours. The notion is just too preposterous to believe.  
“If that were true SHIELD would never let him go free,” I snort.  
Pepper shrugs. “He’s a grey, and sickly, it’s only a matter of time before the rot takes him. What could he possibly do?”

Abraham is held up by some of the yellows, and there’s no point waiting around because if one yellow can talk the hind legs off a donkey then a half dozen can talk off everything but the hee-haw, so Steve and I walk back to the newsroom together.  
I can’t help but think about what Pepper said. And also how much I dislike what she said.  
“I heard about your folks,” I blurt out when the silence between us gets long and uncomfortable. “The rot is a bad way to go.”  
Steve shakes his head. “She didn’t die of rot.”  
He offers no further explanation.  
I shrug. “I’m still sorry, was it recent?”  
“I was fourteen,” Steve says quietly. He glances at me. “I’m sorry you got into trouble, but I was doing fine.”  
I resist the urge to point out that ‘doing fine’ looked suspiciously like ‘laid out cold on the cobblestones’. “Well, if it hadn’t been you it woulda been something or other.”  
Steve’s mouth twists into something not dissimilar to a grin, and I fall a little bit further. “Are you trouble, Barn?”  
It’s wildly inappropriate, and I love it. I flash him my best smile. “Bucky.”  
Steve doesn’t accept the offered nickname, but doesn’t refuse it either. We arrive at the newsroom and I slip between him and the door before he can reach for the handle.  
“You wanna find out?” I ask with a wide smile.  
The almost-smile drops from his mouth, replaced by a frown. He tries to push past me and I rest a hand on his wrist, gentle but insistent.  
“What say you and me-” But I don’t get the chance to get any further as Steve slaps my hand away.  
“Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking arm,” he hisses and shoves through the newsroom door, slamming it in my face.  
Clearly I’m an idiot, but I’m not an asshole. At least, not that kind of asshole. So I skulked in after him, tail between my legs, and went back to work.

I leave Steve alone for the rest of the day. My jaw still ached, and I wasn’t in any kind of hurry to get up close and personal with his fist again. For a little guy he has a decent swing.  
I stir up the embers in the brazier and go back to work. I’d barely got through two feet of the first ceiling high stack of papers in the morning and still had a roomful to go. Even if I resorted to burning them all without even reading any it would take me a year to get through them all. And I’d probably just choke to death on the dust and smoke.  
Well, at least I wouldn’t catch the rot.  
At five o’clock Steve raps on the door and cracks it open without waiting for permission to enter.  
“Time to go,” he mutters and slams the door before I have the chance to say anything.  
I douse the brazier and pack it away, going to the bathroom to give my face a quick wash before heading out. Steve looks mildly disgruntled about being held up, but doesn’t swear at me, just points to his cheek and mutters “You missed a bit.”  
“What? Where?” I ask, scrubbing my cheek with the cuff of my sleeve.  
Steve sighs and sets the workbook he’s holding by the door. Hd takes a step closer, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbing the corner of it on his tongue.  
“You’re a fuckin’ child, you know that?” he mutters, rubbing away the smudge of soot by my nose. I hold still and watch him closely. He has freckles across the bridge of his nose and I kind of want to count them.  
“Thank you,” I say instead of something that will get me punched again.  
Steve picks up the workbook and opens the door, waiting for me to step outside before following after and pulling it closed.  
“See you tomorrow,” he huffs and turns away. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t hear me say goodnight. If he does, he doesn’t let it show.  
I walk back to my place in the red sector, nodding to Natasha outside her house a few doors down from my own. She tilts her head at me but doesn’t say anything, which is probably for the best.

And that was how my first day in Jonagold went. And the day after that, and the day after that. Get up. Go do my pointless, dead end task. Eat lunch. Go back to my pointless, dead end task. Go home to a dark, empty house.  
I did my best to air out my office but the dust and soot got everywhere and I couldn’t shake the smell of charred parchment and mothballs from my clothes. I made an effort to talk to the other reds at lunch, even Darcy, the excitable girl around Becca's age who spent half her time lusting after Wode, a hulking great blue guy who barely seemed aware of her existence.  
My parents didn’t return my telegram, though my sisters sent me a message letting me know that everyone was well. Becca took great delight in informing me that Canary, the yellow who got me into so much trouble, had landed himself a severe reprimand and a one thousand credit fine for losing his ration book.  
Laughed my ass off over that.  
Wednesday was printing day, and I ended up helping out in the newsroom cranking the press while Steve inked the rollers and fed onion skin thin sheets of paper through the rollers. The smell of ink was still heavy on my fingers as I read through the first, smudged copy. News of scrap shortages and calls for salvage prospectors alongside reports on Freedom Fighters out west crammed in with local gossip and listings of colours available for marriage. I read through them through force of habit, but stopped when Steve gave me a dour look. It’s not like I could afford to get married anyway.  
And Steve. Well. Things were going good. He had thawed out some, and as long as I wasn’t pushy he didn’t threaten to break my arm, and I’d managed four days without even getting a smack in the mouth, which had to be a good sign.  
So I was feeling pretty good about myself as I walked home on Friday. A whole weekend ahead of me of not rifling through minutes of town meetings or listening to Abraham’s chatter.  
I may as well have been walking along with a ‘kick my ass, life’ sign pinned to my back.

The archer was waiting on my doorstep.  
I’d seen him around, though he seemed to miss more lunches than he attended. Pepper had pointed him out to me, a low level purple sent to Jonagold for some sort of family disgrace. No one knew what he’d done, though it was widely agreed that it must have been bad, since he came from a long line of purples of high standing.  
“Can I help you?” I ask as I walk over.  
“Hmm?” he looks up from his seat on my front step and flashes me a smile. He’s dressed for travelling, a thick coat and sturdy boots, along with the longbow and quiver of arrows that gave him his nickname.  
“You’re the new kid, right?” he asks.  
I nod and offer him my hand. “James Barn.”  
“Clint,” he shakes my hand. His grip is firm and he seems friendly enough.  
I wave to my front door. “Are you wanting to come in?”  
“Nah,” he flaps a hand at me. “Waiting on someone. Oh yeah, and you’re on border patrol tomorrow.” He pats at a bundle of clothing beside him on the doorstep. “Here’s your kit.”  
“Aw, what?” I blurt out. “I’m already clerking four days a week.”  
The higher up the colour spectrum you are, the less working hours you have, as the quality of your colour and therefore work increases. Reds work five days a week (four in a red town), ultraviolet one day a week. Greys work seven days a week.  
Clint snorts at me. “Which is your duty as an upstanding citizen of SHIELD to earn your weekly allowance,” he tells me in a sing-song voice. “But you’re also here to learn humility for kicking some guys ass, so tomorrow morning at sunrise you come down to the town hall and do border patrol. Same again on Sunday and Monday.”  
I glare at him, but he just seems to find it funny.  
There is movement down the street, and I see Natasha’s front door open. A shaft of warm light spills onto the street and Clint jumps to his feet.  
“See you bright and early then,” he says cheerfully before ambling off in her direction.  
Well, that is a little unexpected. You don’t often see primary and secondary colours rubbing shoulders, and more besides (for all the talk of marriage, plenty of nudge wink goes on outside of wedlock. Or at least I’m told it does).  
I pick up the bundle and head inside before the Night Bell rings, and grumble under my breath at the unfairness of it all.


	5. The Borders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week ago, I would have considered it. Hell, a week ago I would have jumped for it, but now?  
> Well, now I know the cup is tainted, you know? And I’m not touching it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky takes a tour of the borders, and learns some truths.
> 
> Thank you to Moony for making me write, and no thanks at all to Mr Fforde, for abandoning his series on a fricking cliffhanger.

I have to set an alarm rather than rely on the Morning Bell to wake me. I don’t particularly want to get up, but it’s not like I can afford to lose any credits for being late for work.  
The grey that’s supposed to keep my house up to standard has been slacking, there’s no fresh baked bread or warm scones to greet me when I go downstairs like there is back home. There’s not even a pot of coffee on the stove so it’s a handful of stale crackers for breakfast and a cup of water while I’m stood over the sink.  
I should find out who the grey doing the housekeeping is and get them reprimanded but. Fuck, I don’t know. It seems like shit I should be taking care of myself. The floors are swept and the sheets are clean, so it’s not like I’m living in squalor.  
I unwrap the bundle of clothes Clint left me. A thick, warm coat, a pair of hiking boots that look like they’ll fit and a knife in a leather sheath. That is a little unexpected. It’s not a particularly impressive knife, the blade about as long as the space between my index finger and thumb. The handle is wooden, worn smooth with years.  
I attach the sheath to my belt and slide the knife in place. It hangs low on my hip, easy to reach but doesn’t catch on the hem of the coat.  
The coat is nice, quilted for warmth and well fitting. I wonder what colour it is, from the shade of grey it could be green or blue.  
The boots fit, though the worn leather is moulded to someone else's feet. They have the smell of render about them, so the previous owners are mulch for sure.  
They’re good boots, it’s a shame no one else will get to wear them, Hydra food is no end for a reliable pair of boots, especially when they’re so hard to come by.  
The knife will survive. Steve has it. I hope it serves him better than it did me.

The Morning Bell rings and I head outside, squinting at the sunrise as I walk towards the town hall. It’s a nice one, warm reds fading into colours beyond my seeing, the underside of the pale, puffy clouds wine stained and wispy.  
Clint is in the middle of a heated argument with another red on the town hall steps. The red is tall and muscular with a face like a bag of spanners.  
I watch warily as he pushes into Clint’s personal space, pointing a finger at him and cursing while Clint looks nonplussed. The indifference only makes the guy angrier, and he takes a swipe at Clint, overbalancing when he neatly sidesteps the punch. It takes the lightest tap to send the red sprawling down the steps.  
“That’s enough, Rosso,” Clint sighs, pulling a report book out of his back pocket. “I’m docking you a hundred credits.”  
Clint fills out the report slip as the red struggles to his feet. He sees me and points a finger in my direction. “This isn’t over,” he growls.  
Clint holds out the slip. “Go home before you get rehabilitated.”  
The red snatches the report out of his hand and stalks off down the street, away from the red sector.  
Clint sits down on the top step, pulls out a thermos from his backpack and cracks it open like it’s his only salvation. He raises it in greeting. “Hey James.”  
I take a step closer and consider offering a nickname. He hasn’t offered me a surname, which strikes me as odd. A handful of people in town, like Natasha and Sam, are the same. There’s nothing in the rules about not offering your last name. After all, people can see your colour by the pins we are all obliged to wear, stained with false colour that is rare and difficult to process, so that they can be recognised by all, even the greys. So it’s not like they’re colour-blinding. No one would risk stealing a pin and passing off as another colour, that would get you sent straight to mustard, and for what?  
“Morning,” I answer. “Trouble?”  
Clint shakes his head and pours some of the contents of the thermos into an enamel mug. “That was Brock Rosso. Your boundary patrol used to be his. He’s having a few issues with seperation anxiety.”  
He hands the mug over to me. For a moment I think about refusing, but then the smell hits me. Coffee. Actual coffee, not chicory or dandelion root, but actual fucking coffee. After my first swallow I decide that Clint is definitely alright.  
“Call me Bucky,” I tell him between mouthfuls, drinking so fast in burns my tongue.  
Clint chuckles and offers me a top-up. “Truthfully, you've got this job because Rosso’s been using his patrol for black market dealing,” Clint pours more coffee into my mug. “I’m not necessarily against that kind of thing but he was getting sloppy and I hate the paperwork.”  
I snort and take a slower sip of coffee. “Well, you’ll get none of that from me. Not gonna be here long enough to make any connections.”  
Clint gives me a sympathetic look at pats me on the shoulder. “Sure, you’re not.”  
He gets to his feet with a groan, leaving his backpack, bow and arrows on the steps and leads the way to the large wooden doors. To one side is a map of Jonagold painted in black. The shading around the houses and the muted red around the red zone suggests some colours on the map, though faded and flaking away.  
Clint points out the different sectors of the town, the docklands to the east and the rendering plant further north, sitting on the banks of the river where it meets the sea.  
“So you got the tour from Luis when you arrived, yeah?” I nod. “What you won’t have seen is the borders. They get patrolled once a day, and it’s a full days walking, you understand? No dawdling or sightseeing, or you get stuck out after dark and I ain’t coming to rescue you.”  
I scowl at him, and he sniggers and points out how the border is divided into sections.  
“Since one person can’t cover the whole border in a day it’s divided up,” he taps at the western end on the border. “And this here is your route. Now since it’s your first day I’m going to do the walk with you, but after that you go it alone, though you can call in if there’s a problem.”  
“Call in?”  
Clint pats his pockets and pulls out a short plastic tube with a cord dangling from one end. It was red once, the colour faded to the edge of my perception. “Emergency flare. Pull the cord, someone will come to the rescue.” He hesitates. “Eventually. We’ve not got many of these, so try not to need rescuing, okay?” He gives me a pat on the shoulder that isn’t as comforting as he thinks.  
“What’s this?” I ask, pointing to an odd looking line that bisects a part of the fence further south.  
Clint takes a closer look. “That is a freeway.”  
“A what?”  
He gives me a funny look. “The interstate?” I shake my head. “A really big road, there were a whole bunch of them before Insight, spread out across the whole country. You used them to get from place to place.”  
“Couldn’t you just get the train?” I asked, tracing the line of another one that followed the river Cobalt west off the edge of the map. Clint looks at me oddly, with something like disappointment in his colourless eyes.  
“Come on, we haven’t got all day.”

We walk out of town heading west along the highway, past the farms where greys work the fields.  
I spot Steve on the outskirts of one of the farms, sat by the side of the road with his ever present workbook open in his lap. On a few occasions I’ve managed to sneak a peek inside and seen that it’s filled with sketches. He taps a pencil against his full, red lips and hums to himself.  
“Hey, Steve!” I call out.  
He looks up and doesn’t glare at me, which I take as a win. “Clint, Barn.” It’s the closest he gets to saying hello.  
“Bucky,” I tell him for the tenth time. He ignores me.  
“You supposed to be out here?” Clint asks, the hint of resignation in his voice that every colour seems to have when talking to Steve.  
“No,” Steve says with a sly smile.  
Clint sighs. “If I leave you in peace, is there any way it will come back to bite me in the ass?” Steve shakes his head. “Fine, we didn’t see you.”  
Steve’s mouth twists up in a crooked grin that makes my idiot heart miss a beat, and goes back to his sketching.  
Clint watches me closely as we walk. “You got a thing for trouble, huh?”  
“Hardly,” I snort. “He’s not exactly receptive.” Clint laughs. “What?”  
“Okay, first of all, has he tried to break any of your bones?”  
“He threatened to,” I cross my arms over my chest, feeling prickly and defensive.  
“But never actually did it,” Clint chuckles. “Has he stabbed you? Kicked you in the balls?”  
“No, but he punched me in the face.” I prodded my cheek and worked my jaw until it went click.  
“Aw, that’s Steve. That’s how he says hello.” Clint gives me a playful shove. “Trust me kid, you’ve gotten further than anyone else I’ve ever known has. He ripped off a girls ear once for trying to give him a kiss.”  
I was suddenly very grateful for not pushing my luck, and rub my ear nervously.  
“Another ten years and maybe he’ll let you hold his hand without breaking it,” Clint sniggers.  
I poke my ear some more, and do something really stupid. “Yeah, well what about you and Natasha?”  
Clint freezes and fixes me with a glare, hard enough to remind me of how alone we are. No one would hear me call for help. Or find what was left of me.  
Clint blinks and shakes his head. “It’s complicated,” he mutters, and carries on walking.

The border is mostly rusted iron sheeting, with wooden fencing in the areas where the iron has rusted away. The start of my patrol route is marked with a wooden post.  
On the town side of the barrier there is a footpath winding through the scrubby grass and the occasional rusted heap of something from Before. Across the divide is a dense forest, Hydra sprawled out in the sunlit clearings.  
“Security isn’t much of an issue,” Clint explains as we walk along the well worn path. “We’ve got the sea to the east and the river north, so less milage to actually patrol, even with the town's size.”  
“So what is it I’m supposed to do exactly?” I ask, unfastening my coat as the weather start to warm up.  
“Keep a record of any breaches in the perimeter so we can get a repair crew out,” Clint waves a hand at the dense thicket of trees across the fence. “If you’re any good at hunting you can snag some game, maybe even a deer. You can get a good price for meat off-ration.”  
I shake my head. “Never even caught a fish.”  
“City boy,” Clint snorts.  
“Yeah, laugh it up, Robin Hood,” I sniff, but Clint is looking away, peering into the trees. He doesn’t even snort, so maybe he hasn’t heard of Robin Hood. I try to work out what he’s looking for but the treeline is one grey blur to me. Clint finally tears himself away from the view and points to the path ahead.  
“One thing you need to watch out for is Hydra, they move about.” Clint points up ahead. “Not fast, but they can still sneak up on you.”  
There is a Hydra on the path that has managed to squeeze through the fence. It sits in the clearing like a giant, fleshy-petaled orchid, its six long tentacles fanned out on the grass around it.  
The main body is pale, though the tentacles are a deep, bruised red. I can see them clearly against the grey grass, though I can imagine it would be harder for other colours to. Clint takes a few careful paces closer, keeping a safe distance from the tentacles that can lash out at the slightest hint of prey.  
“They catch you with those things,” Clint nods to the nearest tentacle, twisting and coiling at the sound of his voice as he pulls an arrow from his quiver. “Drag you in, get you tangled up nice and tight. Then those flaps come up and wrap around you.” He nocks the arrow to his bow and draws the string back. “After a few days, you’re dead. After a few weeks, nothing left but your belt buckle.”  
He lets the arrow fly and it strikes the Hydra in the pale, skull shaped protrusion in its centre. The tentacles whip up, thrashing violently in the air as the petals flutter and shiver.  
I stumble backwards, but Clint doesn’t move, watching as the Hydra convulses, its movements becoming slower and more erratic until it collapses in on itself. He waits until all the limbs have stopped twitching then steps forward to pull the arrow free. It comes away with a damp, tearing sound, and he kicks the dead thing off the path.  
“If you don’t have any arrows,” Clint wipes the arrowhead on the grass before returning it to the quiver. “Stab it with your knife, a pointy stick isn’t going to cut it.”  
I swallow and make a pathetic noise. Clint doesn’t respond, just scuffs at the depression left in the path with the toe of his boot.

We take a break at the base of one of the squat wooden towers that are dotted every few miles along the boundary. Tower is a generous term for them, as they look more like wooden cubicles on short stilts. They are barely six feet square and raised shoulder height from the ground  
We sit in the shade of one for lunch, which is a couple of sandwiches from Clint’s backpack and a canteen of water. Clint sits facing the woods while I look back towards town.  
“Check in at town hall before patrol, they’ll set you up with food and water,” Clint pulls a bit of gristle out of his sandwich and flicks it into the long grass. “Check in when you get back too, you’ll need to fill out a report.”  
I nod quietly, chewing slowly on a crust. It has a gritty, chalky taste which is infinitely preferable to bonemeal. The filling looks to be mostly chicken, and Clint assures me that it is, as the farms all have flocks of hens. Around half the eggs left to hatch produce cockerels, which get dispatched and sent to the town hall canteen.  
I quietly resolve to stick with white meat and fish as long as I get the choice.  
I don’t care what the rules say, okay? Some things just don’t sit right in my guts.

After lunch we keep walking, following the boundary line across fields and over the uneven, grass covered heaps of things from Before. We climb a rise and Clint points to a clearing some distance past the fence. My sight is nowhere near as good as his, but I can just about make out the crater and the shape of a huge grey structure that made it. The surface is fuzzy, thick with plants and intrepid trees that like growing at right angles a hundred meters in the air.  
“What the heck is that?” I murmur, squinting.  
“Insight,” Clint cocks his head to one side.  
I nearly take a tumble down the slope. “ _That’s_ Insight?”  
Clint’s mouth is a grim, hard line. “There were three of them they say. So big that they blotted out the sun.”  
I stare in awe at the distant wreck. “Did the Freedom Fighters take it down?”  
“No. No one stopped them. They got old and worn out and fell outta the sky.”  
“Holy cow,” I murmur. “Anyone been out there for salvage?”  
Clint shakes his head. “Not yet.”  
Salvage was becoming more of an issue as time went on. Resources were limited, and a lot of things couldn’t be made, only scavenged. As the White City got desperate, townspeople were pushed to search further afield to meet the monthly quotas.  
“Are there any towns out there?” I wonder aloud.  
Clint snorts. “Not since that thing fell. Nothing between us and the Great North Wall.”  
There is the slightest twitch in his expression, but I don’t call attention to it, just pick my way back down to the path.  
“Come on,” I shout. “I don’t want to be stuck out here when the Night Gaunts come out.”  
Clint follows after me. “If you get caught out after dark, use one of the sanctums.”  
“The what?”  
He points to one of the wooden cubicles on the path up ahead, like the one we had eaten lunch underneath. “Sanctums. Climb up, climb in, bolt the door and wait ‘till morning.”  
When we approach one I stop and take a closer look at it. It looks pretty flimsy, like a Howler or a Boojum could tear it open easily. Fuck, a determined squirrel could get in there.  
“Does it work?” I ask, incredulous.  
Clint shrugs and keeps walking.

We reach the end of our section of the border, clearly marked with another wooden post. Clint points out the trail that heads back into town and we follow it away from the heavily patched fence.  
I’m too damned tired to make conversation. My legs ache and my feet have gone numb.  
Clint walks a little ahead, a pair of mottled grey birds dangling from his hand. He’d shot them straight out of a tree.  
I’m serious, we had been walking along the last stretch of boundary and then the next thing I knew he had his bow up and drawn back, arrow against the string. A soft ‘thwp’ and there wasn’t even a squawk, just the muffled thump of feathers hitting grass and Clint climbing over the fence to retrieve his arrow and the fat little bird on the end of it. Ten minutes later, the same thing happened again.  
I figure the birds must have had purple feathers or something for him to see them so clearly, but it put him in a good mood. I guess Natasha likes fat little birds.  
I don’t say anything. For one thing he probably wouldn’t take it well, plus he was walking ahead of me, and I would just get ignored.  
We pass by the farms and up ahead I see Steve sat in pretty much the same place we left him in that morning, nose buried in his workbook. Clint shoves an elbow in my ribs, hard enough to make me yelp. Steve glances up from his drawings and sees Clint waving while I rub my side and swear under my breath.  
“Hey, Steve,” Clint calls. “I gotta run some errands, you make sure this dumbass gets back to town hall?”  
Instead of telling him to go fuck himself Steve shoves his pencil behind his ear and gets slowly to his feet. I go over to offer him a hand up, but he tells me to shove it, so I guess he can manage fine.  
Clint winks at me, and it’s the least subtle thing I’ve ever seen. “See you later,” he calls over his shoulder and ambles off down the road.  
“I’m pretty sure I can make it into town,” I mutter, though I try to smooth down my hair while Steve isn’t looking.  
“It’s getting late, I should be heading back anyway,” Steve tucks the workbook under his arm.  
“You gonna show me what you been doing all day?” I take a swipe at the book, and he must have been tired, because for once I actually manage to grab it. I take a few hurried steps back, cracking the book open to a random page, and Steve loses it.  
“You bastard piece of shit, give me that back!” he snarls, making a grab for the book.  
I’m a fair bit taller and even after a long day on patrol I’m faster, so it’s easy to keep out of his reach. Steve hisses and spits as I reverse away from his outstretched arms, walking backwards down the street as he follows, calling me every name he can think of.  
I stumble to a halt when I actually get a look at what’s in the book.  
The town hall in painstaking detail down to the last brick. A pair of boots, one tipped onto it’s side, the laces trailing. A handful of wildflowers, their stems crushed, propped up in a tin mug. Wanda standing behind the booth at the post office, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear with delicate fingers.  
“Holy shit, Steve,” I gasp.  
He snatches the workbook back, snaps it closed and gives me his worst glare, the one that really gives his eyebrows a workout.  
“You do those yourself? They’re fantastic!” I enthuse, and that kinda takes the wind out of his sails.  
“Yeah,” he mumbles and starts walking towards town as fast as he can.  
“Abraham said you did illustrations for the Herald, but that is some serious art. How’d you learn to do that?” I keep pace with him easily, falling into step beside him.  
Steve sniffs, his ears burning. “Just practicing.”  
“You ever need a model? I could pose for you?” I’m pushing my luck, I know it, but Steve just snorts. “Come on Steve, you wanna draw me, admit it.”  
And then, wonder of wonders, Steve laughs. It’s a brief, choked off little thing, and I fall a little further at the sound of it. I made him laugh.  
Steve clears his throat, biting his lip to keep from smiling, and points to the town hall.  
“You think you can make it from here?” he asks, raising an eyebrow,  
I pat my pocket where the reassuring bulk of the flare is tucked. “If not I’ll send up for a rescue party.”  
Steve snorts. “Goodnight, Bucky,” he says softly.  
I watch him head for the grey sector, before shoving my hands into my pockets and sauntering the rest of the way, feeling pretty damn pleased with myself.  
Like that could last.

When I get to the town hall to fill out my report there is a creepy looking bald guy with thick rimmed glasses waiting for me.  
Maria, a polite but honestly terrifying purple guarding the records office, hands me a form to fill out along with a copy of the rule book. Being a town hall copy it’s about the size and weight of a small paving slab and needs both hands to carry it over to the nearest sturdy-looking table. She reluctantly lends me a pencil and keeps half an eye on me while I frown over the form, trying to remember find right codes and colours for each category. I absently tap the pencil to my teeth and Maria lets out a soft, low hiss. I apologise, but if looks could kill, I’d be mulch.  
The creepy guy comes over while I’m stressing over subsection E (red) and holds out his hand.  
“Jasper Citrus,” he announces.  
I fumble the pencil, and it falls the floor with a clatter before rolling off under the table. Given the choice between pissing off the mayor and pissing off Maria, I crouch down under the table and snatch up the pencil, waving it at Maria in triumph as I get up again.  
I set it carefully down on the form before shaking the Mayor's hand.  
“Pleased to meet you, sir.”  
He looks slightly pained. “Yes, well. Welcome to our town. I trust you’re being treated well?”  
“Yes, very well. Thank you.”  
“Good,” he nods, looking pensive. “And you have no issues or matters that you wish to discuss?”  
I shake my head, and carry on working on my report. “No sir. Thank you sir.”  
He watches me as I check boxes and refer to the rule book for the occasional code. “Nothing at all? Because it’s been brought to my attention by a few individuals that you. Well. You seem unusually perceptive.”  
I glance at him briefly. “Yeah?”  
He nods and seems to come to a decision. “What was your colour rating? seventy percent?”  
“Seventy one,” I answer, returning to the page in front of me.  
“You’re from a red sector, is that right?”  
“Egremont Russet.”  
The Mayor hums to himself, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a booklet. “A small town, is that right? Fairly low population?”  
“Yeah, been in decline for a while.”  
That’s not really news. The population is in decline everywhere. There was a time when there were enough greys to work five days a week, now even working seven the farms and factories are still understaffed. There are districts around White City that plough all their funds into lamp oil so the factories can run eighteen hour days. Though with the rate of greys dropping from exhaustion it seems counterproductive.  
“Now, this is between you and me,” he says softly. “But often you’ll find that in the smaller towns you can end up with an overabundance of chromatics of the towns colour.” He flicks through his booklet. “No doubt the eugenicists will tell you it’s the result of a large breeding pool of suitable reds.”  
“Uh-huh?” I offer noncommittally as I check through the form and sign it.  
“Now chromatics are essential to the smooth running of society, we all understand that. But too many chromatics is just as bad as not enough. SHIELD needs workers as well as agents.” He finds his page and marks it with his thumb. “So when a Pantone auditor finds himself over quota, it’s simply a matter of knocking a few points off the score to ensure that balance is maintained.”  
The pencil lead snaps on the page as I date my report. For a moment I try to convince myself that I _did not just hear that_. The Pantone auditor tests every member of society when they come of age to determine their perception. _How we live_ is based on the results of those tests. An auditor declares who is grey, who is a chromatic, what colours we perceive through a standardised test. The very idea that the results could be altered is.  
Fuck.  
I straighten up and turn to him, and I take a deep breath to, I don’t know, yell at him, throw shit around, ask him what the fuck? And he flips open his booklet and holds it up to my face.  
“Look at this,” he says calmly.  
Like an idiot, I look.  
The page is red. Red like a burn, like the insides of your eyelids, like the blood that comes pouring out my nose. I choke on it, and it fills my mouth, hot and salty and metallic.  
Bright white flashes of light fill my vision like the magnesium flare of the Daguerreotypers on Carmine Island, who’d fix your likeness onto a sheet of silvered copper for fifty credits.  
I’m distantly aware of a dull pain in the back of my head. The halls cold tile floor against my back. The mayor shouting for Maria to fetch the trichomancer.  
Things get kind of blurry after that.

My eyes ache, and I reach up to rub at them, knocking the trial frames that are perched on my nose. The little circular lenses slotted into the frames rattle when I bump them, and a soft voice shushes me, taking hold of my hand and pulling it away from the delicate apparatus.  
“Careful, Mr Barn.”  
I blink. The world is an odd colour, one I’ve never seen before. A hand appears in front of me, oddly toned and vivid, and plucks the lens out of the frame over my left eye. The world goes back to its usual shades of grey, at least in one eye.  
“Welcome back,” I get a strange, tinted view of the speaker. A man with rumpled features and tousled hair. He is wearing wire framed glasses and looks like he needs about a week of uninterrupted sleep.  
He turns to the wooden case beside him, filled with neatly stacked circular discs of coloured glass. Each one has a number etched onto its edge, and he carefully slots the lense into place before selecting a new one.  
He turns back to me and gives me a kindly smile. “I’m Bruce, the trichomancer. You gave us quite a show.” He slots the lens into place, and removes the lens from the other side of the frame. “Let's give you a bit of… Yes. Eucalyptus. Settle your nerves.” he returns the lens to it’s slot and picks out a new one.  
As soon as it drops into place I feel weightless, adrift. Bruce counts to five, and then removes the lens. I resist the urge to ask for it back.  
“Just a little bit, mind.” He gives me a knowing look.  
He slots another lens in its place, and my head slowly clears.  
“You remember what happened?” Bruce asks as he removes both lenses and returns them to their case.  
I wait for him to remove and fold up the frames, watching as he slots them into the wooden case alongside the lenses. “Yeah. I got shown a swatch of red.”  
“Crimson,” a voice behind me confirms. I look around to see the Mayor with his arms folded across his chest, looking far too fucking pleased with himself.  
“Crimson?” Bruce raises his eyebrows. “At close range? Why would you do that?”  
“Confirming a theory,” the Mayor mutters. “Thank you for your assistance, Doctor. That will be all.”  
Bruce grits his teeth and pointedly breathes out slowly through his nose. He snaps the wooden case closed and flicks its little brass latches into place. He gets up, helping me to my feet. The front of my shirt is soaked with blood, and my mouth tastes like something died in it. I swallow. Yeah, like something bled to death.  
“You need to drink plenty of water and get some rest,” Bruce tells me, picking up his case and tucking it under his arm. “If you have any dizziness or headaches, you call for me, okay?”  
I rub the back of my head, it’s tacky with drying blood. “Yeah, sure thing Doc.”  
Bruce pats me on the shoulder and wishes me luck before leaving.

“What the hell?” I hiss, turning to face the mayor.  
The man looks delighted about almost killing me. “Mr Barn, you should be pleased!” he announces.  
I pluck at my shirt, it’s sticky and smells like a rendering plant, and the colour makes my heartbeat thud behind my eyes. “Yeah, I’m thrilled,” I mutter sourly.  
“No, no, Mr Barn,” the mayor takes a step closer. “I expected a reaction from you, but not such a visceral one.” Yeah, visceral is right. “An aneurysm is a rare reaction, it only occurs in the top five percents.”  
“Aneurysm, huh? Is that what it was?” I’m still sore and sour tempered, and more than a little freaked out, so don’t get his point.  
“Mr Barn, you are at the very least ninety five percent perceptive.”  
“Huh?” I let go of my shirt and wonder if I’m still unconscious. That can’t be possible.  
The mayor shakes his head. “You must have hit your head harder than we thought,” he sighs. “Mr Barn. James, may I call you James?”  
“Okay,” I say slowly.  
“James, a perception rating of ninety percent makes you eligible for a position in SHIELD,” he claps his hands together. “And I would bet my ration book that you are ninety five percent or higher, perhaps even as much as ninety eight percent.”  
I shake my aching head, even though it makes my vision blurry. “I took my test, it came out seventy one percent. You can't retake the test, it’s against the rules.”  
“Well, rules can be bent, James.” The mayor gives me an unsettling smile. “We at SHIELD would be delighted to welcome you into the fold.”  
My shirt is soaked in blood and I need a bath and this crazy eyed guy is... It’s too much to take in.  
“Doing what?” is all I can think to say.  
The mayor spreads his arms wide. “What do you want to do? Be a Pantone auditor? A STRIKE team agent, fighting the rebels? There are many opportunities in SHIELD, the chance to travel, see all of this great nation. And you’ll be well rewarded of course.” He winks at me. Now I really need a bath. “And your prospects, James. There will be no limit to the ladies of marriageable age who’ll want your attention, and will let you try before you buy, if you know what I mean.”  
I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up. I’m going to aim for his shoes.  
I put the back of my hand to my mouth, there’s blood on my chin, drying on my neck, and I’m so fucking tired. All I can think of is to buy myself some time and get the hell away from the creep.  
“Thank you for the generous offer, Mr Citrus,” I say slowly, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “But it’s been a long day, and you’ve given me…” I swallow, take a deep breath. “... Much to think about.” I give him a weak smile. “Can I take a few days to think on it? Decide what role would suit me best?”  
He claps his hands together like a child. “Yes, of course!” he exclaims.  
“Thank you, sir,” I manage.  
He pats me on the back. “Now, now, enough of that. Call me Jasper.”  
I nod my head, but in all truth I would sooner slit my throat than call him a friend.

I walk back to my house, the Night Bell ringing as I reach the red sector. I’m too damned tired to run, let the Howlers come get me if they want me so bad, but I make it to my door unscathed.  
It’s dark and cold, so I go from room to room lighting every lantern I can find before taking half of them into the bathroom and arranging them on on every available surface - the cistern behind the toilet, the bathroom cabinet, the sink. The rest go on the floor.  
The tarnished taps in the bath turn, but do little more than spit and cough until I make a few well aimed kicks at the copper piping, then they get the message.  
I strip off while the bath fills with tepid, cloudy water. The shirt is ruined, so I ball it up and toss it aside for the rag and bone man. The boots and jacket I take downstairs and leave for the morning.  
Everything else gets folded up and put in the laundry for the grey to deal with later, and I climb into the bath. I take the sliver of soap I brought from Egremont Russet and soap up my hands, massaging the lather into my scalp. I scrub and scrub at my face and neck until my skin is raw and tingling, and watch the pink-tinged suds disperse in the water. By the time I’ve washed the worst of the blood out of my hair the water is rust coloured and makes me feel nauseous, so I pull the plug and watch it drain away before refilling the bath, but at least this time the water is relatively warm.  
I lie back and stare at the spots of black mould on the ceiling.  
Ninety five percent, maybe higher, and a job at SHIELD.  
A week ago, I would have considered it. Hell, a week ago I would have jumped for it, but now?  
Well, now I know the cup is tainted, you know? And I’m not touching it.  
But I’m not going to tell Jasper fucking Citrus that, the guy flapped his jaw and like an idiot I listened, and if he gets a whiff of me not toeing the line then I’m mulch.

Not that it really mattered in the end, another week and I’d be dead.


	6. The Yellow Cord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I pull my handkerchief out of my pocket as we walk and wipe my nose. It’s a wonder there’s any blood left in me at this point. I stare at the blotches on white cloth and am suddenly, thoroughly sick of the colour red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter!  
> The return of Luis!   
> Bucky gets another punch in the face from Steve, and it's not the worst thing that happens to him.  
> Poor Bucko.
> 
> My eternal thanks to Kate, for starting me writing in the first place, and Moony, for not letting me stop.

I don’t sleep so great, and am up and dressed in my travelling clothes before my alarm goes off.  
I sit in the kitchen with a dozen oil lamps for company and wait for the Morning Bell to ring. I don’t feel like eating, but chew my way through the last of my crackers and think about Egremont Russet.  
Honestly, finding out that the Pantone auditor fudged my results? It pisses me off, to put it lightly. And the thought of going back there? Aside from a single message from Becca, I may as well be dead to them all, so as far as I’m concerned the whole chromatic order can go fuck itself.  
So I sit at my kitchen table, surrounded by flickering, smoky oil lamps, and try to figure out what the hell to do. By the time the Morning Bell rings, I’ve come up with nothing, so I blow out the lamps one by one and walk over to the town hall.

Rosso is waiting for me on the steps.  
“Look, pal,” I sigh as he comes stalking towards me. “I’m just doing what I’m told here. You got a problem, take it up with Clint.”  
Rosso doesn’t slow down, he raises both hands to my chest and gives me a hard shove backwards. “This is my fucking run. You walk away, you little bitch.”  
I stumble, but manage to stay upright. “Seriously, man. Let it go,” I growl. I’m tired and freaked out and in no mood for his shit. Rosso shoves me again.  
“I said walk away,” he snarls.  
“Yeah, an’ I said fuck you,” I spit back.  
Rosso throws the first punch, it snaps my head back, makes my teeth rattle. I pull back, shake my head and sock him in the mouth. My knuckles split open on his teeth, but it’s worth it to see the bastard spit blood. Instead of making him back off, it just pisses him off. He grabs me by the throat and starts punching me in the kidney. I manage to get in a a few hits, but it’s not long before I’m on the ground. He kicks me in the stomach and I curl up into a ball, trying to protect my head with my hands.  
It takes a moment to sink in that he’s stopped, and I uncurl enough to see what’s happening.  
Rosso is bent over double and turning in slow, frustrated circles, clearly someone heard the fighting and came over to intervene. And by intervene I mean throw themselves onto his shoulders and start punching the back of his head while he screams and tries to throw them off.  
It’s Steve.  
Fuck, turns out Clint was right, Steve had been going easy on me. He’s a dirty fighter, aiming for the eyes, the throat, any potential weak places. I’m suddenly, painfully grateful that Steve has only ever given me the one punch to the face.  
I scramble to my feet and shout for a chromatic. An audience has already gathered to watch the performance, and in a second Maria is shoving her way through the crowd and screaming at everyone to move.  
I manage to get behind Rosso and grab Steve by the waist. “Come on, pal. that’s enough,” I tell him.  
Steve gives Rosso one last punch before letting go, and I drag him as far away as I can, keeping my arms tightly wound around his waist. Good thing too, as Rosso lunges for us, and it takes three townspeople to hold him back. Steve kicks and squirms in my grip before finally going limp.  
“That’s enough,” Maria orders Rosso, and he stops struggling.  
She doesn’t ask what’s going on, which shows just how sloppy the guy must have been getting over his illicit dealings.  
Maria glances over at me. “You need the trichomancer?”  
I risk loosening my hold on Steve enough to dab at my bloody nose with my knuckles. “Pretty sure I’ll live,” I tell her.  
She pulls out her record book and writes up a citation.  
“Oh, you are fucking kidding me,” Rosso snarls.  
“You want a ticket on the Night Train?” she snaps, and he falls silent.  
She hands him his ticket and he snatches it up, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it on the floor at her feet.  
“This ain’t over,” he growls.  
Maria tells him to get out of her sight, and with one last glower towards me and Steve, he storms off.  
One of the greys from the town hall brings out my lunch, a sandwich and a canteen of water, and I shove them into my pockets and drag Steve away from the hall. I snatch up his workbook from where it has been dropped on the steps and we leave before either of us get fined.

I pull my handkerchief out of my pocket as we walk and wipe my nose. It’s a wonder there’s any blood left in me at this point. I stare at the blotches on white cloth and am suddenly, thoroughly sick of the colour red.  
Steve pulls a compact out of his back pocket and cracks it open.  
“You okay?” I ask, worried.  
He nods, looking at the swatch before handing it over. I frown at him, but take it, opening up the hinged metal discs. There’s a swatch of healing aquamarine on one side and emerald on the other, I recognise the serial numbers printed at the bottom of each one. I blink, my eyes itchy and watering at the contrast, but I feel the bruising around my ribs and mouth recede, and the ache in my kidneys and teeth fade away.  
I snap the compact shut and give it back. “The trichomancer give you that?”  
Steve nods and slips it back into his pocket. “Yeah. I get…” His mouth twists. “I get into a lot of fights.”  
“Yeah,” I agree softly.  
Steve sniffs. “This is easier for both of us, otherwise looking after me would be his full-time job, y’know?”  
There’s no point in suggesting that he could try not getting into fights.  
“Yeah, I know.” We walk in silence for a while before I remember my manners. “Thanks for,” I let out a half laugh. “For kicking that guys ass.”  
Steve gives me a lopsided grin. “My pleasure.”  
We fall into an easy silence, walking side by side. I keep glancing at Steve’s workbook, thinking of the pictures inside it. It seems painfully unfair that someone so gifted doesn’t have colour.  
When we reach the farm Steve comes to a halt.  
“Well, this is me,” he says, shuffling from foot to foot.  
I can’t think of anything smart to say. “You got food?” I ask, intending to split my sandwich if he hasn’t.  
“I’m good,” he assures me, sitting cross-legged on the grass and opening up his book.  
“That what you do all day, sit in the sun and draw?” I nudge the sole of his shoe with the toe of my boot.  
Steve grins at me, and I fall a little further. “As far as you know.”  
Of course as soon as things start to go well between us I have to open my big dumb mouth.  
“If we got married you could paint in colour.”  
Steve’s expression hardens, and rather than do the smart thing and keep my mouth shut I keep talking.  
“I mean, just red, but that’s something, right? You could do flowers or, um. There’s these little round insects, they have spots on their backs. Or. Uh…”  
Steve is on his feet before I can take a breath, and clocks me one right in the jaw. I flinch and rub my cheek. It doesn’t hurt so much as the last time he hit me, and maybe I’m still kind of battered from the fight with Rosso, but I can’t shake the notion that he pulled the punch at the last minute.  
Steve sits back down on the grass and pulls the workbook back onto his lap. He turns to a fresh page and pointedly doesn’t look at me. “And that’s all that matters, huh? What fucking colours you can see.”  
I stop rubbing my cheek. “Hey, wait a minute, I didn’t mean-”  
“Go away,” Steve says flatly, and starts scratching lines across the page.  
“I just meant that-”  
“I don’t fucking care, alright?” Steve snaps. “Just… Go away.”  
I retreat, holding my hands up. “Alright,” I say softly. “I’m sorry.”  
Steve doesn’t answer, not that I expected him to.

I walk up to the boundary, kicking myself every damn step of the way.  
The sky is overcast, and there’s a chill wind coming off the sea, so I button up my jacket and pick up the pace, trying to keep warm.  
The day passes slowly without Clint’s company, and even with the dose of ultramarine and emerald I’m still sore and tired. I make use of the time by trying to figure out what the hell I should do, but by lunchtime I’ve gotten nowhere. I can’t travel without a train ticket, and I have no interest in using my return to Egremont Russet. I could maybe stay on the train past my station, but where would I go? What would I do when I got there?  
I eat lunch with my back against one of the rusting, grass covered hulks that appear along the path around the, what did Clint call it? Interstate? I scratch at a tuft of grass, and it peels away in a neat strip. Underneath is rough metal, pitted and buckled and the colour of oxide. I scratch at the colour and it comes away under my fingernail. I press a little harder and my finger pops through the corroded metal like it was paper. I poke at it a little more, though when I peer into the hole I’ve made it’s too dark to see anything. just a vague impression of a hollow that one or two people could crawl into.  
I finish my lunch and get up to take a walk around the lump. I pick another place at random and pull back the grass. More rusted metal, a wide, flat expanse of it. When I punch through it, it’s not hollow inside, there’s a tangle of corroded rubber and metal and the thick odour of oil and something chemical that sticks in the back of my throat.  
I pick at another spot, and find glass underneath, cracked and crazed.  
I’m aware of time getting on, so I wipe my hands on my trousers and return to the path, glancing back at the shape under the grass. Whatever it was, there was a lot of them Before, and none of them now.

I’ve not gone far when I hear a sound coming from the woods. I hesitate, then slowly approach the fence and cock my head. I hear it again, a high pitched wailing that makes my skin crawl. For a second I think about booking it, and then the sound chokes off. It’s a _person_. Some poor bastard in trouble.  
“Fuck.”  
The fence in this part of the boundary is wooden, short upright posts with long slats of wood nailed across them. I climb over, the dry, brittle wood creaking ominously under my weight, and drop down on the other side.  
The ground is soft underfoot, layers of fallen leaves and thick moss. I pick up a fallen branch, snap the side branches off, and use it to poke at the ground ahead of me in case there is anything lurking under the leaf litter and twigs. I pat at the knife at my hip to reassure myself it’s still there and walk into the woods, hoping that scratching up the dirt around me will leave a clear enough path to get me back to the boundary.  
The screaming stops abruptly and I pause, trying to listen out for any clue where they are.  
“Hello?” I call out.  
There is a moment of stillness, and then I hear yelling again. I know that voice.  
“Luis?!” I shout.  
“Red? Red, holy fuck is that you?”  
I pick up the pace, sweeping the ground in front of me. “Yeah, it’s Bucky. From the train, remember?”  
“Yeah! Fuck, brah, I’m fucking mulch!”  
I’m about to reassure him when I stumble into a clearing and skid to a halt. I stop just in time, but my branch isn’t so lucky, it gets snatched up by a Hydra tentacle. I stare, horrified as the tentacle whips around the brittle wood, lifting it into the air and crushing it to splinters. The tentacle thrashes around, just out of reach, and I can make out the petals spread out across the clearing.  
Luis is on the far side, both his legs and one of his arms firmly in the grip of the Hydra's tentacles. His other arm is wrapped around a low bough of a tree. He’s wearing a backpack that’s gotten snagged in the thick, lower branches. It’s the only reason he’s still alive.  
“I’m so fucking glad to see you, buddy!” Luis calls out, his voice cracking.  
The Hydra tugs at him again and one of the seams of his backpack rips, spilling its contents. A tentacle lunges for canteen of water that falls to the ground, another goes for the tin cans that follow it.  
I realise that nearly all the tentacles are occupied and pull my knife out. I tug the canteen out of my pocket and throw it across the clearing, and the last tentacle whips after it. I dart forward to the middle of the Hydra and see the pale, skull-like protrusion in the center of the ring of petals and shove my knife into it.  
The Hydra convulses, the tentacles slamming into the ground and rising up, and Luis’ backpack finally gives way. He screams and clings to the tree with all his strength, and I twist the blade as the petal rise up and slap at me. I pull the knife out and drive it in again, twisting until I break through the tough, fleshy base and stab into the woodland floor below, and the thing finally shudders and goes limp. The dark red ropes wrapped around Luis go slack and he kicks himself free.  
“Fuck!” he yells, then sits heavily on an exposed tree root and buries his face in his hands.

I pick my way across the clearing and rescue my canteen. It’s dented in the middle from where the Hydra grabbed it, but I slip it into my pocket anyway before I go over to Luis.  
“You okay, pal?” I ask.  
Luis nods, keeping his face covered. “Thought I was done for,” he mumbles.  
I pat him on the back. “You’re okay.”  
My knife is covered in sickly sweet smelling sap, and I wipe the worst of it off on a clump of moss before sliding it back into its sheath.  
I sit down on the root next to Luis, and he lets out a quiet little moan and throws his arms around me. I huff and pat his shoulder while he squeezes me almost as tight as a Hydra.  
“It’s okay,” I sigh and gently ease his arms up from my ribs, which are still sore from taking a beating from Rosso. Luis rests his head on my shoulder and loosens his grip, but doesn’t let go of me, and I’m okay with that.  
“What were you doing out here on your own?” I ask, pulling my canteen out of my pocket and unscrewing the cap. I offer him a drink, and he finally releases me, taking the water in both of his shaking hands and taking a long swallow.  
“Scotty,” he says after a breath. “Got him set up at a place in Pearmain.”  
The name rings a bell. “That’s a blue town, right?”  
Luis fixes me with an odd look, then slowly shakes his head. “It’s… unaffiliated.” He watches me for a reaction, then when I don’t freak out he starts talking, slow and careful. “There are towns out west where there’s no SHIELD. It doesn’t matter what colour you are, what you can see. It’s not an easy life, not like some folks have it here. But when you die you get put in the dirt, you don’t get processed and turned into candles and sandwiches, or any shit like that.”  
Luis offers me the water. “You okay, man?”  
I nod dumbly and take a sip. We sit in silence for a while, listening to the creak of the trees and the rustle of leaves in the breeze.  
“Can anyone go there?” I blurt out. “Could I... I mean, is that possible?” I turn to Luis and he grins.  
“You? Yeah, sure thing! The more the merrier. It’s not like we can just up and go, though, there’s shit to figure out.” Luis splays out a hand and counts on his fingers. “First of all you need a new identity, and since we can’t manufacture that shit, we have to go with stolen. So a ration book of an approximate age and corresponding colour. Luckily for my man Scott, we just got one that was perfect for him, so he’s Seth Canary now if anyone asks.” Luis taps at his fingers. “Then you need transportation, plus supplies for the journey and once you get there, shit ain’t all set up and waiting like it is here.”  
I take another gulp of water. “But I can still..?” I stop, shake my head. “No, wait. I can’t just go. Do you know Steve? He’s a grey, little guy, free with his fists…”  
I know he’s mad at me right now, but I can’t leave him behind. Even if we get out and he never wants to talk to me again, at least he’d be _out_.  
Luis chuckles. “You think he doesn’t already know about it? I already asked, he said no. Doesn’t think it’s right to just run away, he’d rather-”  
“Stay and fight,” I finish for him.  
“Yeah. He’d risk the Night Train to make sure other people get out, but won’t save his own ass.”  
Of course he wouldn’t. I lean back against the tree trunk and sigh heavily.  
“Oh, dude’s got it bad for the little guy,” Luis shakes his head. “Well, maybe you can change his mind. There’s a place for you both if you can, we need guys like you.”  
The penny drops. It makes a hell of a noise.  
“You’re a Freedom Fighter.”  
Luis slaps my chest with the back of his hand. “We call ourselves the Resistance, which is like a hundred times more badass, you know?”  
Yeah, it is pretty badass.  
“Are there many of you?”  
Luis shakes his head. “That’s classified, brah. But we’re everywhere, hiding in plain sight and all that shit.” He grabs the front of my shirt. “We’ve got your back.”  
I pat his hand. “Same here, pal.”

Luis gathers up his belonging and stuffs them into his torn backpack, tying the whole thing up in an excessive amount of string before pulling it over his shoulders and hefting it to make sure everything inside stays put.  
“So, I’ve gotta get moving, shit to deal with and all that.” He gives me a serious look. “But I ain’t never gonna forget what you did for me, you understand?”  
I shake my head. “Luis, it’s fine. You’d have done the same.”  
He unfastens a thin band around his wrist, a twist of waxed cord a shade that makes my eyes itch.  
“I don’t know how it is with reds, but yellows got a custom.” He takes my right hand and slips the cord around my wrist. “When someone does you a great service you owe them a life-debt.”  
“Luis,” I mutter, embarrassed. Reds have the same custom. A silver coin, about the size of a thumbnail, called the blood price.  
“No, no. Hear me out. You saved my life, so I’m gonna do the same to you. You get into trouble, any kind of trouble, you give this to a yellow. Any yellow, even the one giving you shit, and they’ll look after you.” He gives me a sly look. “Even that shitbag Mayor of ours.”  
Luis tucks the band under the cuff of my shirt. “Don’t go flashing that shit around though, yeah.”  
I nod and pull the sleeve of my jacket into place, and Luis gives me a pat on the arm. “I’ll be seeing you, yeah?”  
He heads off through the woods and I have a moment of panic.  
“Luis, wait!” I shout.  
There is a thrashing in the undergrowth and he reappears. “Yeah?”  
I let out a huff of relief. “Which way to the boundary?”  
He laughs and points to a stand of trees identical to every other group of trees around the clearing. “That way. You need me to walk you back?”  
I shake my head. “I’ll manage.”  
“Yeah, well scream like a girl if you get stuck. Worked for me!”  
I snort and give him a wave before turn away and pick my way through the undergrowth, trying to keep in as straight a line as I can until I finally reach the boundary fence.

I come out a little further along the path than when I went in, but I still have to run the rest of the way. I lost a lot of time in the woods, and don’t want to get caught out after dark.  
Luis doesn’t seem too worried about it, wherever he’s going.  
I hope he’s safe, and Scott too.  
I reach the end of my section of boundary and stop to catch my breath, my hands on my knees as I bend over and take deep, ragged breaths. I straighten up again, my ribs complaining, and start towards town at a steady pace, trying not to fret about the slowly darkening sky and just putting one foot in front of the other.  
When I reach the farm, Steve isn’t there. It’s good, I guess, that he’s not out late. But still, I would have liked to have seen him, figured out if he was still pissed off with me.

Maria is closing up the town hall when I pound up the steps. She looks startled as I slump against the heavy wooden doors and wheeze at her.  
“Barn, you’re not dead. I guess I owe Natasha five credits.”  
I’d say something sarcastic, but my lungs feel like they’re about to burst.  
My knees suddenly refuse to support me and I sit down heavily on the top step. While she waits for me to stop wheezing Maria pins a sign up on the town hall noticeboard offering a five hundred credit bonus to anyone willing to go prospecting in Kingston Black.  
“What happened?” she asks as she smooths down the sign and pushes the last pin in place.  
I had thought about what to say on the run back, and figured the best thing to do was go as close to the truth as I could get away with.  
“Hydra,” I pant, and pull my knife, still sticky with drying sap, out of its sheath to show to her.  
“Ugh,” she recoils from the blade, and I shove it back in its place. “Well, I said you’d get snatched by a Hydra, so I guess Natasha owes me that five credits.”  
I glower at her. “Well, thanks.”  
She gives my shoulder a pat. “Nothing personal. Come on, you can fill out your report in the morning, unless you want to stay out here and get snatched up by a Howler.”  
“Oh, well you’re spoiling me,” I mutter, forcing myself onto my feet again.

Maria walks me to the red sector to make sure I don’t drop dead and make a mess of the street. I make a point to say thank you, however fucked up my life is, it’s still no excuse not to be civil.  
“See you in the morning, Barn,” she says with a smirk, and leaves me to walk the rest of the way to my door.  
The Night Bell rings, and the only light left is spilling from the houses onto the street. Oil lamps and candles sit on windowsills, flickering and smoking, and nothing comes out of the dark to eat me or send me mad.  
I reach my door and push it open, kicking it shut behind me before I take off my boots and shrug out of my coat. I go into the kitchen where all the oil lamps are still on the table. They have all been trimmed and refilled, and one is already lit. I fetch a taper from the kitchen drawer and lift off the glass cover from the burning lamp, put it to the wick and watch it catch and burn. I replace the cover and light a couple more lamps, arranging them around the sink so I can give my knife and sheath a proper clean under the tap.  
The dried sap comes off easily, and I dry the knife off carefully before fetching a whetstone out of the kitchen drawer and running the knife across it a couple of times to sharpen the blade. The sheath takes a little more effort to clean, but I get the worst of the sap and Hydra off it, and lay them both on the table. I take one of the lamps to the pantry in search of something to eat.  
The grey that keeps my house seems to have finally taken pity on me, as there is a battered old cake tin on the shelf. I lever off the lid and find half a dozen scones inside. They don’t smell like tallow, so I take one out and risk a bite.  
The flour has been cut with something powdery, though it tastes more like potato than plaster or chalk. The scone is a little dry from not being made with enough fat, and smells a bit like chicken.  
It’s delicious.  
I slide to the floor of the pantry, my back to the shelves, the tin cradled in my lap. At the bottom of the tin buried underneath the scones is a slip of paper, folded in half. I put my scone down long enough to fish it out and unfold it.  
It’s a drawing of a flower, scratched in pencil with a steady, precise hand. Although the image is black and white, I recognise what it is; a poppy. Underneath is a message, the handwriting as neat and careful as the drawing above it.  
_There are better reasons to ask_  
It’s not signed. It doesn’t need to be.  
I tuck the picture into the back of my ration book and take out another scone before putting the lid back on the tin. I sit on the floor of the pantry under the light of a single lamp and eat my dry scones, and fall a little further.  
I catch myself dozing, curled around the cake tin, and force myself to put it back on the shelf, collect up my lanterns and go to bed.


	7. Colours Fly Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maria smacks me in the middle of my forehead, making me flinch. “You need to be smarter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky learns more about the Chromatic order, the Rebellion, and what Steve has been getting up to.
> 
> A thousand thank yous to Kate for her bidding on me for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction, and to Moony for making me get off tumblr and get on Google Docs

I manage to get some sleep for a change, but still force myself out of bed when my alarm rings. I get dressed and stumble downstairs to rummage through the cupboards in search of something resembling coffee. I manage to find a jar of dusty looking chicory root, and spend a full minute debating wether or or not it’s worth just chewing a handful of them.  
It hardly seems worth stoking up a fire just to let it go out again, so I stick with a cup of water and a scone for breakfast. I sit at the kitchen table and try to think of a way to say thank you for the scones, and sorry for being an idiot but without actually coming out and saying it.  
I check the kitchen drawer, it’s full of odds of string, screws, kitchen implements that will never be used, reels of thread, needles and rolls of gauze. Nothing that would suit my need. Then I remember the bag I brought from Egremont Russet, and stomp back upstairs, shoving the last piece of scone in my mouth and almost choking when I breathe in crumbs.  
I find them right at the bottom of my bag, whole and unharmed, and shove them into my pocket. Perfect.  
I clatter back downstairs, strap my knife to my hip and pull on my coat and boots, and am out the door at the first chime of the Morning Bell.

Maria is unlocking the doors when I arrive at town hall, and gives me a nod as she lets me in. She leads the way to the records office and gives me my form to fill in. I heft the rule book over to what has become my usual table and open it to the relevant section while she sets up for the day.  
I’m halfway through the form, hesitating over Section C (red) Subsection F: Indigenous Flora and Fauna when Maria brings me a mug of coffee. It’s dandelion root mixed with something fruity, maybe cherry bark, but it’s still gratefully received.  
“You missed the big excitement yesterday,” she says, leaning against the table.  
I think about the Hydra and Luis’ revelation, and doubt that anything less than the collapse of the chromatic order could up my experience yesterday.  
“Yeah?” I say instead.  
“Citrus has gotten it into his head that there’s a _pure_ in town.”  
I manage to suppress a flinch, but Maria isn’t looking at me anyway.  
“Yeah, thinks there’s a true red among us. can you believe that?”  
I shake my head. “Ain’t nothing pure in this place.”  
She snorts. “Yeah, well he’s gotten his panties in a twist about it. A pure colour is about as rare as it gets, bringing them in will get him a nice bonus and a ticket out of here.”  
My hand is shaking too bad to write, so I put down the pencil and pick up my mug, wrapping both hands tightly around it and taking a sip.  
“What’s so special about a pure anyway?” I ask.  
She gives me an odd look. “You know the colours are fading, right?” I shake my head. “Were you even listening in school?”  
I manage a weak smile. “If you shared a classroom with Betty Cinnabar, you wouldn’t pay attention either.”  
Maria huffs. “Pretty, was she?”  
“You have no idea.” 

“A hundred years ago, chromatics were pures,” Maria begins. “Now, you need seventy five percent perception to be a chromatic. To be a red you used to need at least fifty percent red perception, now it’s thirty. They’re even talking about dropping it to twenty five.”  
“So what’s happening? We’re all going to end up colourless like the greys?”  
She rolls her eyes at me. “Greys can see colours, just less than thirty percent. Less than thirty percent is a lot more than nothing.”  
I stare at the mug in my hands. I should know this, why had I never thought about it. Maria gives me a sympathetic look.  
“We call them grey. We pack them into terraces and keep them separate. We don’t talk to them. SHIELD and the chromatic order is based firmly on the division between them and us.”  
I shake my head. “Why are you telling me this?”  
She leans forward and touches my wrist, and I see the yellow cord peeking out from under my shirtsleeve.  
“Luis is a good judge of character.” She tucks the cord under my shirt cuff. “But you’ll want to keep that thing out of sight.”  
I stare at her while she tugs the sleeve of my jacket into place. “You’re…”  
“Walls have ears,” she answers quickly. “But yeah. If you maybe spend a bit less time pining after our Steve and more time paying attention, you’ll see us all around you.”  
“So why are you still here?” I ask, my voice hushed. “Why not get out while you can?”  
She shakes her head. “It’s not that simple.”  
“Yes it is,” I hiss. “You could go tomorrow. Just pack up and leave.”  
“And what about the people I leave behind?” Maria snaps. “The greys dying in the factories? The people sent away on the Night Train? SHIELD will turn a blind eye to the occasional colour making a break for it, but you think they’ll let a single grey escape? You’ve got sisters, right? You want to see them end up as render?”  
I shake my head. The thought of Becca being mulched down into luncheon meat and candles makes my stomach turn. I can’t even think about Winnie.  
“Bruce thinks -”  
“The trichomancer? He’s one of you too?”  
Maria smacks me in the middle of my forehead, making me flinch. “You need to be smarter.”  
I rub my stinging brow and resist the urge to point out that it’s a lot of shit to take in.  
“Bruce thinks that we’re reverting, that when Insight happened SHIELD did something, changed something, and we’ve slowly been reverting back. The old knowledge is long gone, and SHIELD needs a pure to reverse engineer the process.”  
“And do it again, but better,” I finish.  
She nods ruefully. “If we run, eventually they’ll come after us. So we stay and we fight back.”  
It’s a shitty plan, but it’s the only one that makes sense.“What do I do?”  
Maria gives me a small, proud smile. “Do your job, keep your head down. Whatever you did to get that gift from Luis? Keep doing that.”  
“What about this pure?” I ask, my stomach churning.  
“It might be nothing. But if it is, we’ll deal with that when we come to it.”  
For a moment I consider telling her who the pure is, but ‘deal with that’ sounds suspiciously like I’d end up as mulch, so I keep my mouth shut.

I finish my form and give it to Maria along with her pencil, and she sends me to the canteen to fetch my lunch.  
I get cussed out by the grey dealing with boundary patrollers for denting my canteen, but they run out of steam before I run out of wide eyed apologies, and refill it with a huff. I thank them, shove my sandwich and canteen into my pockets and head out to work.  
The sky is overcast and the air has a metallic smell. It seems appropriate.  
I keep my head down and start walking, one foot in front of the other. My legs ache from all the hiking over the last few days, and my knees have started making an unsettling clicking sound whenever I walk downhill.  
Considering I’m only twenty one years old I feel ancient.

Steve is sat in his usual spot outside the farm, and I remember Maria’s comment about greys, how they can see some colour. No wonder he was pissed off with me, thinking he only saw the world in shades of black and white.  
I walk over and wait for him to look up from his sketching, raising an awkward hand in greeting.  
“Hey. So I’m a huge idiot.”  
Steve gives me a lopsided smile. “Yeah, you are.”  
I want to ask if I can sit with him a while, but if I did, I’d probably never get back up again. So I fumble in my pocket and pull out my gift, two pencils.  
“Here, these are. Well, they’re for you.”  
Steve stares at them, his lips parted in surprise. pencils are hard to come by and hoarded jealously. The one he’s using now has been worn down to a nub.  
He shakes his head. “I can’t take those.”  
I give him an encouraging smile. “Look. I’m gonna say dumb stuff. All the time. And you’re gonna be mad at me for it, so…” I shrug. “These are me saying sorry for the dumb shit I haven’t done yet.”  
Steve twists his mouth up. “Bucky.”  
I bite back a smile, because that is a little victory all on its own. He reaches up and wraps his hand around the pencils, the tips of his fingers brush against mine.  
“Thank you.”  
I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting. “So, you got big plans for the day?”  
He gives me a sly smile. “Yeah.”  
“Aww,” okay, so maybe I lay it on a little thick. “And here I was about to ask you to keep me company.”  
Steve actually looks a little disappointed. “Another time, maybe.”  
“Sure thing. See you later?”  
He nods and tucks the pencils into his coat pocket. I give him a wave and start walking.

I get about ten paces before it hits me, and I stumble to a halt. Steve glances up from his drawing.  
“You okay, Buck?” he asks as I turn around and walk back to where he’s sat.  
“Canary,” I say dumbly.  
Steve stares at me, his eyebrows furrowed. Maria’s right, I need to be smarter.  
“Canary,” I repeat. “The guy at the theater, the one who dragged you out back for a beating-”  
“Bucky,” Steve bristles, ready to insist that he was fine, even when he was sprawled over the cobblestones with blood in his mouth.  
“The guy’s name was Canary. Seth Canary.”  
Steve shifts warily, closing up his workbook and shifting his feet underneath himself. It’s subtle, the way he moves from sitting to a crouch, ready to make a run for it.  
That he thinks I’m a threat, even subconsciously, stings.  
“I saw Luis, he’s gotten a mutual friend out of trouble,” I say slowly. “The guy goes by the name Canary now.”  
I tip my head to one side, and Steve’s expression clears a little. He settles back down on the grass, though he doesn’t open his workbook.  
_Oh_  
“You little shit!” I gasp.  
Steve squirms uncomfortably, pulling his book up to his chest.  
“You let that guy knock seven bells out of you so you could…” I look around, suddenly aware of what I was about to say, and step closer, lowering my voice to a hiss. “So you could steal his ration book?!”  
Steve raises his chin defensively. “He was an asshole, he got you rehabilitated.”  
Yeah, the guy was an asshole, and deserved far worse. I let out a chuckle, and Steve gives me a rare smile. It makes my skin tingle, hot and cold.  
“How’d you get to Egremont Russet?” I ask.  
Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know what you mean, I’ve never been to Egremont Russet. Don’t even know where it is.”  
He gives me a challenging glare, his head held high.  
“You are such a punk,” I say softly.  
He flushes, the tips of his ears turning a soft shade of ruby. “Jerk,” he mutters.

I follow the road up to the boundary, leaving Steve to whatever mysterious business he gets up to all day.  
The sky starts to clear and I unbutton my jacket as it warms up. My knees ache, but start to loosen up as I plod along.  
The day passes quietly, no one screams for help from across the fence, though I listen out just in case. Mostly I just keep walking, keeping an eye out for Hydra and letting my thoughts chase each other around in little circles.  
I wonder who else in town is with the Resistance, or if not with them, then at least supportive of them. _Us_ , it occurs to me. _Not them, us_.  
I wonder what Luis is up to, if Scott has made it to Pearmain safely. Most of all I worry about Steve, and hope he’s not getting himself into trouble. Hell, who am I kidding, of course he’ll be in trouble, I just hope it’s the kind he can get out of again.  
I stop for lunch at the same place I did the day before, and sit on the grassy lump of hollow metal again. I tug at a little more grass, down at one corner, and find an odd cube of something like glass under the dense thatch of weeds. A brick of fragmented clear… plastic? A smaller piece of faded red underneath it.  
I finish my sandwich, tuck my canteen back into my pocket and carry on down the path.  
Nothing tries to kill me, and I finally reach the end of my patrol route. A poster has been pinned onto the wooden boundary post, calling for volunteers to go on a prospecting run to Kingston Black. I read through the details while taking a drink from my canteen, a lot of nonsense about the chromatic order and a search for fresh resources. The reward has been upped to six hundred credits for a successful journey. There is a map at the bottom of the poster showing Jonagold bisected by the railroad running south towards White City and north to Macintosh and the Great North Wall. Kingston Black is a way out west. The map shows one of Clints interstates winding towards it, running alongside the river Cobalt until it twists north to the wall.  
Not as far away as Egremont Russet, but still more than a day's walk. No wonder they’re getting desperate for volunteers.

I walk back towards town, past the farms full of greys working until dusk. I feel a twinge of guilt, watching them work the fields by hand. It ain’t any kind of life they’re living.  
Steve isn’t in his usual place by the farm gate, and it gets me worried. I stop and look around in case he’s nearby, but there’s no sign of him.  
I must look pathetic since I get noticed.  
“You lost, man?”  
I look up and see the blue chromatic, Sam. He’s walking towards the farm with a battered metal canister in one hand. It’s shaped like a kettle with a handle and a spout, and looks like it could hold a few gallons of liquid. The paint has faded, but it was once red, with lettering in a shade that makes my eyes itch.  
“Nah,” I say when I realise he’s patiently waiting for an answer. “Was just looking for someone.”  
Sam snorts and gestures with the canister. “Steve? Just saw him, he’s headed home for the day.”  
I can’t help but think of him laid out on the cobblestones in Egremont Russet. “He alright?”  
Sam looks at me, careful, assessing. “Yeah, been a long day.”  
I don’t ask for details, and he doesn’t offer any.  
I chew my lip. “I’ll see him tomorrow then, I guess.”  
Sam nods, and I wish him good evening before walking back to town.

Maria is in the record office when I get to the town hall, and I get a cup of coffee with my form and rule book. I say coffee, I’m not sure what it is, it tastes like the syrupy black soda they sell at Carmine Island filtered through a cornfield. Still, I drink it, and I’m grateful for it.  
Maria leaves me to fill out my form while she packs up for the day. It doesn’t take long, as nothing tried to attack me or eat me. I sign and date the paper and hand it back with my empty cup. She offers me some more, and I accept, keeping her company while she sorts through the paperwork that SHIELD seems to insist on. Daily chromatic reports, records of fines and citations in triplicate, farming quotas, rendering tallies, they all get sorted and filed away.  
I think about the SHIELD chromatics from hundreds of years ago, filling out the same forms and filing them away, just so they can get stacked up in a back room in mouldering piles until someone comes along and incinerates them.  
Here we are, scratching around in the dirt for every last scrap we can use, processing our dead into candles and fertilizer, and we still waste it on bureaucracy.

I get shooed out the door so Maria can lock up, and wish her a good evening before walking back to my house. I see Clint further up the street, waiting across from Natasha’s door. I raise my hand in greeting and he gives me a nod, though I leave them to their privacy, pushing open my front door and kicking off my hiking boots.  
I feel so damned tired, not just my body, which is just one mass of aches and twinges. My head feels worn out too, my heart wrung out like a dishrag.  
I slide off my coat and hang it up before shambling into the kitchen.  
The oil lamps are filled, the wicks trimmed. One is lit, carefully placed in the middle of the table. There is a fold of paper tucked under the base.  
I slide it out, picking up the paper by its edge and slowly unfolding it.  
It takes a moment to realise what I’m looking at. Me. In soft pencil scratches and smudges. I pull a chair out from the table and sit down, laying the paper down on the table and smoothing out the crease across the middle with my fingertips.  
He must have paint or coloured pencils or something, artificial colour like the ones used on the lapel pins that everyone is required to wear. Because there is the lightest brush of red across my lips in the drawing, a dark shade of brown colouring my hair, pale blue coloured eyes.  
My breath catches. Blue.  
My eyes are blue.


	8. The Proposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So prove it,” Citrus says slyly. “Come with me. See the sights, take a tour of SHIELD headquarters.”  
> “I’ll prove it,” I give a sharp nod towards the poster on the door. “I’ll go to Kingston Black.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky makes a rash promise and we find out a little more about the people of Jonagold.
> 
> Thank you as always to Kate for bidding on me in the Fandom Trumps Hate auction, and to Moony for making me actually sit down and write.

I wake up to the Morning Bell, and resist the urge to just tunnel deeper under my blanket. There’s no part of me that doesn’t ache. I lie for a moment and think about it. No, my elbows seem fine at least.  
I force myself up and dressed, in day clothes rather than hiking gear, and go downstairs. I had planned on eating my last scone, washed down with a cup of water, but there is a half loaf of bread waiting for me on the table. There is no accompanying message with it, but the last scone has gone, which tells me everything I need.  
I eat a slice spread with some tart berry jam I find at the back of the pantry. The bread is dense and unsalted, and I nearly crack a tooth on it. It’s the best slice of bread I’ve ever eaten. I polish off a second slice before heading out to work.  
The street is quiet as I walk to work, so I’ve not exactly got my wits about me as I reach the newsroom.  
Yeah, I’m a fucking idiot.  
I'm looking at one of those prospecting posters pinned to the newsroom door when Jasper Citrus comes out of nowhere, and I’d bet a hundred credits the bastard was lying in wait for me.  
“James!” he calls out, acting like bumping into me was a fucking surprise. “So good to see you.”  
I bite back a curse and slap a fake smile on my face. It’s brittle around the edges, but he doesn't seem to notice.  
“Mr Citrus, good to see you again,” I choke out.  
He puts a hand on my shoulder, and I want to snap every bone in his wrist. “I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you? About our little discussion?”  
I don’t know what SHIELD actually want to do with a pure, cut up my brain or strap me down to some arcane medical device for testing or what. I don’t ever intend to find out.  
“I’m sorry sir,” I do my best to look penitent. “With my boundary patrol I’ve not had any time to stop and think.”  
The Mayor’s face freezes, and the hand on my shoulder tightens. “This is a serious issue, James. SHIELD needs you, I need you.”  
I shake my head. “Really sir, I don’t mean no disrespect. It’s important to me, I swear. I just need to figure out how best to serve the community.”  
“You can serve the community by coming with me to White City,” the grip on my shoulder becomes painful.  
My mouth dries up and I swallow, a convulsive little gulp. “Mr Citrus, I live to serve the chromatic order, to…” I hesitate, then remember the last conversation I had with my father. It’s not a pleasant memory. “I owe it to everything my forebears invested in me. To my children and my grandchildren.”  
It’s a small miracle that I don’t throw up. He looks a little mollified but doesn’t let go of me.  
“So prove it,” he says slyly. “Come with me. See the sights, take a tour of SHIELD headquarters.”  
“I’ll prove it,” I give a sharp nod towards the poster on the door. “I’ll go to Kingston Black.”  
Citrus flinches and I straighten up, shrugging his hand off my shoulder. “You said so yourself, I’m very perceptive. Who better to send out?”  
He visibly deflates. “Well, yes. And we’ve been sorely lacking volunteers.”  
The door cracks open and Abraham appears. For all I know he had been waiting for the right moment to come to the rescue. “Ah, Mr Barn. We thought you lost to Boojums.”  
I shake my head, “No, I was just having a chat with the mayor,” I say, and then shove my way past him through the doorway.  
Abraham, bless his heart, moves aside for me, but blocks the way when Citrus tries to follow.  
“I shall arrange your departure for tomorrow, James!” he calls over Abrahams shoulder.  
“Ah. I think not,” Abraham says brightly. “Mr Barn is assisting us with the printing of the newspaper tomorrow.” He gives Citrus a concerned look. “It is his duty as a citizen.”  
Citrus huffs irritably. “Very well, the day after. I’ll see you at town hall at first light.”  
I mutter something vaguely positive, but keep my distance.  
“Thank you, Jasper, that will be all for now,” Abraham says with a warm smile before slamming the door in Citrus’ face.

“Well, you certainly have a gift for getting yourself in trouble,” Abraham says as he leads the way to the newsroom.  
“It’s not my fault,” I grouse.  
“What’s not your fault?” Steve looks up from his desk, and my guts temporarily try to rearrange themselves.  
“Mr Barn has volunteered for the trip to Kingston Black,” Abraham explains.  
“What?!” Steve snaps. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”  
“It’s not my fault,” I repeat, a little quieter.  
Abraham gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “No, it’s not. Our mayor just wishes to get into SHIELD’s good books and get a ticket home, more fool him.”  
I let myself be led to an empty chair beside Steve’s desk. “He’s not from Jonagold?”  
Abraham snorts. “No one is from Jonagold.”  
Steve fetches me a mug of watery coffee from the little kitchen just off from the newsroom. He shoves it into my hands and stands behind my chair, the palm of one hand pressed between my shoulder blades.  
“He was sent here, much like the rest of us, for troublesome behaviour not in keeping with the good of society. Rosso with his violent outbursts, our trichomancer for being a grey sympathiser.” He glances at Steve. “Troublemakers, misfits, we all get sent to Jonagold. Even you, lacking humility.”  
I shake my head. “I got a ticket, I can go back when my three months is up.”  
Steve digs his fingers into my skin as Abraham lets out a bark of laughter. “Is that what they said? Think, what were their actual words?”  
“A three month reassignment, but…” I hesitate, and reach into my pocket for my ration book. I flick through the pages, and Steve sees the sketches tucked between them. His fingers twitch against the nape of my neck at the sight. I pull out my ticket stub for the train and hold it up.  
“See, I have a ticket,” I announce.  
Abraham gives me a pitying look and I look closely at the ticket. It’s a single.  
“You were never meant to go back,” Abraham says softly. “You were given a set time for your reassignment, but were never meant to return.”  
I think of my family, how disappointed my parents were to have lost their investment. How none of my friends had even tried to contact me after I left.  
Well, fuck.  
“What about you? What did you do?” I ask numbly.  
“Political unrest,” Abraham says ruefully. “I asked too many questions.”  
He sigh and goes into the kitchen to brew more coffee, leaving me and Steve alone in the newsroom.  
Steve brushes his fingers across the nape of my neck, just above the collar of my shirt. “You okay?”  
I shake my head. “I didn’t even want to go back.”  
He slides his fingertips into my hair. Cautious, testing.  
“Can’t and won't ain’t the same thing,” he murmurs.  
I let my head fall back and his strokes his fingers in little circles against my scalp. “Don’t go to Kingston Black,” Steve whispers. “It ain’t safe.”  
I tilt my head further back, pressing into his hand and meeting his eyes. “Not like I got a choice.”  
He looks about to say something, but Abraham comes back into the room with a fresh pot of coffee, and his mouth snaps shut.  
“Well now,” Abraham says. “I’m sure if we go through the archives we can find something useful about this place you’re going to.”

The archives don’t offer up much. A map and a brief history of the town. It had been a thriving community until fifty years ago, when an epidemic of the rot had wiped out the entire population. After such a long quarantine it shouldn’t be infectious, Abraham assures me. It looks like every other place I’ve ever seen, a town hall surrounded by colour sectors and grey housing, a handful of stores and a train station.  
I thank Abraham for the information and the coffee, and go to the back room to start my days work.  
I don’t light the brazier, instead I pull a stack of minutes from the most recent town meetings towards me and start to read.  
I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but hope that I’ll recognise it when I find it.  
Steve knocks on the door at lunch time, and doesn’t wait to be invited in.  
He looks me at the desk, surrounded by papers. “What are you doing?”  
I shrug. “I don’t know yet. Still figuring it out.”  
“Very mysterious. Come on, lunch.”  
I mark the page I’m reading and follow him out the door.  
“Defacing town minutes is a punishable offence, you know,” he tells me, his voice warm and amused. “I could dock you five credits.”  
I mock gasp at him. “You wouldn’t dare!” he chuckles. “Well clearly I’ll have to buy your silence.”  
He doesn’t answer, a warm blush flushing his cheeks, the tips of his ears the colour of wild roses.  
We arrive at the canteen and Steve goes to sit with the other greys. I walk over to the red tables and suddenly there are hundreds of eyes watching me. I remember Citrus and his comments on someone noticing I was perceptive, and find myself wondering which one of them ratted me out.  
It’s an unpleasant thought that goes against every notion of colour loyalty I was ever brought up with. I would probably have just remained frozen in place, staring right back at them all if Wanda hadn’t grabbed me by the hem of my jacket and pulled me into the empty seat next to her.  
I manage to thank her, even though the shade of her lips gives me a headache.  
“You’d think they’d never seen an idiot before,” she remarks.  
“Huh?”  
Wanda snorts. “The whole town is talking about you volunteering.”  
“Oh.” Well, maybe it wasn’t a red that sold me out after all.  
Wanda takes pity on me, and deflects most of the questions I get from curious reds over lunch. Her role as post office master comes in handy, as she is a well of deeply personal information about each red that she sends scurrying away.

I thank Wanda for her company at the end of lunch, and go outside to where Steve is waiting. We walk back to the newsroom, Abraham deep in conversation with some yellows on the town hall steps, and I offer to help out in his absence.  
For once Steve accepts the offer and teaches me how to typeset, arranging tiny little blocks with back to front metal letters stuck on them in densely packed trays.  
The work is time consuming but takes all my attention as otherwise I forget to arrange the letters of each word backwards for printing, and Steve flicks my ear and calls me an idiot.  
The insult is softened by the smile on his face when he says it.  
While I work on the letters Steve transfers the weeks approved sketch onto a thin sheet of wood. I half watch as he uses a small metal tool to carve the design into the wood.  
“That how you get pictures in the paper?” I ask, curious.  
“Sometimes. If it’s just a simple image then yeah, I just scratch it onto a piece of wood and it gets set into the printing block.”  
He picks up the piece he’s working on and slots it into the open space in the middle of the tray I’m arranging letters in. It fits perfectly. While I’m taking that in he reaches over and rearranges the i and the e of the word I’m working on.  
“So can you print daguerreotypes? Like the ones you get on Carmine Island?”  
“Yeah, Abraham has one. It prints onto these thin sheets of metal. When you process them they have these little holes in them. Some are big, some are small, some are kind of inbetween, all in a grid.” he picks up a pencil and starts making a pattern in dots. “So you put it in the press, and you get big ink dots for dark areas and little ink dots for light areas.” He holds up the pattern, and if I half close my eyes I can see a coffee cup in it.  
It reminds me of some of the tests a Pantone auditor does, circles crammed full of different sized dots all clustered together, and you have to look for the hidden numbers.  
“Holy cow,” I smile at him, and he puts down the sketch and goes back to work.

Abraham reappears soon after, and offers far more gratitude for my efforts than I deserve, especially as while he’s thanking me he sits down and starts fixing all my mistakes.  
Before long the day is over, and we head out onto the street, wishing each other a good evening before heading off in our separate directions.  
I watch Steve walk back to the grey sector and half wish I’d offered to walk him home.  
But he would probably have punched me for it.  
The house is cold and dark when I get home. I light the oil lamps and arrange them on the table while I eat a dinner of bread and pickles from the pantry.  
I wonder if the greys court like the colours do. If there is a carefully ordered system of gifts and gestures, of parents negotiating and contracts being drawn up.  
Or maybe two people who like each other can just… Talk. See where they end up. Maybe they give gifts because it’ll make the other person happy or it’s something they need.  
I think about all the credits I’ve spent on dull poetry and boxes of chocolates. I think about a couple of pencils given without expectation, and gifts in unexpected places.  
My eyes are blue, and I would never have known.


	9. The Road to Kingston Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a distant rumbling from behind me as the light fades from the sky. I tighten the grip on my knife and turn to face it. I can’t hide and I can’t escape, and I’ve got no chance of beating it, but fuck it I’m going down fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what, I'm just gonna let you folks read and keep my mouth shut.
> 
> Thanks, as always to the lovely Kate for giving me such a great story to work with, and to Moony for making me sit still long enough to actually write it.

I wake up with an odd sense of foreboding and force myself out of bed. I get dressed and go downstairs, eat a slice of bread and jam for breakfast and head out to the newsroom.  
Steve is already there, rushing around trying to get the press sorted and I roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.  
We spend the morning printing the weekly paper, Steve inking the press and feeding the tissue thin sheets of paper into it while I crank the wheel, fast enough to get a clean print but not so fast that I tear the sheets. Abraham takes the fragile pages and arranges them on the drying racks, folding them up once the ink has set, ready to be delivered.  
By lunchtime my arms ache and I’ve managed to get ink all over my shirt. Steve comes off worse, smudges of black across his nose and above his eyebrow. I poke at them with my finger while he bats my hand away and calls me an asshole.  
The greys assigned the newspaper delivery come to collect the papers. I point out that it would be easier to just take them to the town hall and let people help themselves, but Abraham shakes his head and refers to the rule book.  
We go our separate ways for lunch. I sit next to Pepper and wonder what it’s like at the grey table, nodding but not really listening as she chatters about the local gossip.  
I make polite noises while she complains about the condition of the grass verges around the farmland, and fundraising to have the town flag recoloured as it’s fading and makes Jonagold look poor compared to other towns.  
It’s a relief to go back to work.

With Abraham off gassing with some yellows I spend the afternoon helping Steve clean up after the morning's work. The letters get wiped and sorted into their individual boxes, over forty in all with letters and punctuation. The trays and dividers get cleaned and stored away and finally the press gets cleaned down and oiled.  
Steve acts jumpy the whole time, pausing now and then, his oily rag half raised to emphasise his point and I wait for whatever it is he has to say. But he just gives the slightest shake of his head and carries on working.  
When everything is finished up and set for the next day it’s already late, so we give up on waiting for Abraham to come back and pack up to go home.  
Steve hesitates at the door instead of just saying goodnight and booking it.  
“You alright, Steve?” I ask quietly while he chews on his thumb looking pensive.  
“They sent people out to Kingston Black before, they never came back,” Steve mumbles.  
I nod. Pepper had been kind enough to go over my limited chances of success over lunch.  
“I’ll be a couple of days,” I promise. “I get into any trouble, I’ll come straight back, make up something.”  
I don’t tell him that I can’t come back without something to keep Citrus off my back.  
“But you will come back?”  
I risk a punch in the teeth and take a step closer, reaching out to him. He meets me halfway, tucking himself up in my arms and letting me hold him. The top of his head fits neatly under my chin, like we’re two pieces of a puzzle slotting together.  
It only lasts a couple of seconds before he pushes away again, and I let him go, though I don’t want to.  
“Stay out of trouble,” he grumbles, not meeting my eye.  
“Yeah, well I’m leaving all the trouble right here.”  
He glances up at me and flashes a crooked little smile. “You are such a jerk,” he snorts and turns away.  
I watch him hurry down the street to the grey sector, and keep watching long after he’s gone.

I wake up to my alarm and let out a quiet little groan before forcing myself out of bed.  
I get dressed in my warmest clothes and fill my backpack with a few extra items of clothing before going downstairs. I rummage through the kitchen drawers, looking for anything useful to take with me, then fill my canteen with water and eat the last of my bread.  
I can’t think of anything else to kill time with, so I strap on my knife, pull on my boots and fetch my coat.  
I think of leaving a message for Steve, but don’t know what to say. The Morning Bell rings and I button up my coat, grab my backpack and go out to face the day.  
The Mayor is waiting for me at the town hall, looking half-nervous, half-excited. but then he isn’t going out into the damn wilderness in search of a town that may or may not still be infected with rot. He raises both hands in the air when he sees me approaching, like I could somehow miss him.  
“James! There you are!”  
“Good morning, sir,” I mumble.  
He puts his arm around my shoulder and I suppress a shudder. “Come in, I’ll brief you.”  
There are some supplies laid out for me on one of the tables in the hall. A fresh canteen of water, a pack of sandwiches and a map of the route to Kingston Black.  
“That’s not much, sir,” I point out as I open up my bag and start packing up my supplies.  
“No?” Citrus looks surprised. “You don’t need that much, do you? You’ll be back by Night Bell tomorrow, after all.”  
I frown at him. “It will take that long to walk to Kingston Black, let alone look around and come back again.”  
He laughs and shakes his head. “Walk? You won’t be walking, you’ll be taking the horse and trap. You should be able to find shelter for the night there, and come back in the morning.”  
I wonder what I’m supposed to do if I can’t find shelter.  
Citrus checks to make sure I have my supplies before directing me to the record office. Maria is waiting for me, offering quiet words of support as I fill out my prospecting forms. She helps me go through the survey that I have to take with me. The thirty page audit damn near takes up half the room in my bag.  
I tell her I’m going to use it for firelighters and she lets out an undignified snort. I don’t know which of us is more startled.  
Citrus hustles me back outside before I get the chance to say goodbye.  
“Sir, I've never driven a horse and cart,” I point out. “Nor worked with horses neither.”  
Citrus waves a hand dismissively. “You won’t be going alone, you’ll have a drayman.”  
Well, I figure company would be good. Maybe it’s Luis, since he’s the only one I’ve seen working the horse and trap around town.  
Citrus points to an approaching horse and cart.  
“Ah, here we are,” he announces as the horse, a large dappled grey that I’ve not seen around before, comes to a halt in front of us. I look up to the driver and swear under my breath.  
“James Barn,” Citrus announces. “This is your driver, Brock Rosso.”

Rosso grins at me and slaps the bench seat next to him. “Come on, we wanna be there before dark.” He grins at me, wide and feral. “Don’t wanna get et by Howlers.”  
Citrus slaps me on the back. “See you tomorrow, James.” He leans forward and whispers in my ear. “And keep an eye out for good salvage, we can always find, ah, private buyers for notable goods.”  
I nod, too dumbstruck to say anything smart, and climb up onto the carriage. Rosso shifts over to make room for me, and I wonder how far out of town he’ll take us before he tries to slash my throat and leave me for the Night Gaunts.  
Citrus gives us a cheerful wave goodbye and Rosso shakes the reins, spurring the horse into movement.  
“You can stick your bag down there,” Rosso gestures to the foot space between us. I shake my head and tug at the straps over my shoulders warily.  
“I’ll keep it on for now, thanks,” I mutter.  
Rosso snorts and steers the horse northwards towards the rendering plant.  
“No need to get all worked up, I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”  
I don’t believe him for a second, and slump back in the seat as we cross town. 

Rosso lets me sulk until we reach the rendering plant and turn west along the river. The river road is one of Clint’s Interstates, so wide that it defies reason. There are remnants of a barrier of some kind down the middle, but otherwise it’s a pointlessly huge strip of road dotted with enterprising trees and shrubs that have taken root in the cracks in the surface. I wrinkle my nose at the smell as we pass downwind of the rendering plant.  
“Phoo-ee,” Rosso laughs. “Pretty ripe today.” he grins at me, but I don’t meet his eye, staring at the road ahead. He lets out a sigh. “Look, Barn. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but we’re past that now.”  
I shrug and say nothing, keeping my hand resting on my knife as we reach the boundary. There is a heavy iron gate across the road, a bored looking grey on duty. Rosso waves him over and hands him a travel permit giving us permission to leave the town for forty eight hours. The grey checks the form carefully before stamping it and going back to the gate. It doesn’t swing out like other gates I’ve seen, but needs unlocking before it can be slid across, making an unearthly squeal as metal slides against metal.  
Rosso gives the reins a shake and clicks his tongue, and the horse trots forward. I turn in my seat to watch the gate as it’s pulled closed behind us and locked into place.  
“They lock us in?”  
“Course they do. For our own safety, keeps the Howlers out. Can’t leave Jonagold without a permit, whether it’s road or rail.” He gives me a sideways glance. “Why else d’you think the borders are patrolled?”  
Suddenly his ire at losing his job makes more sense, working the boundary must make it a lot easier to get in and out of town.  
We follow a bend in the road, and I tighten my grip on the knife, but Rosso doesn’t even try to attack me, just whistles to himself and makes the occasional comment on the birds by the river.

The river is nothing like I expected it to be. I’ve never even seen a river before, Egremont Russet being right up against the sea, and not even the real sea, just dock yards as far as the eye could see, the water churned up from the steamers and clippers.  
Hell, for all I know Egremont Russet was surrounded by fences and locked gates too, I’d never thought to venture near the edge of town, that was all factories and endless rows of grey terraces.  
So when I thought of the river I had imagined a harmless little stream, maybe something you could paddle in on a hot day. No, the thing was so damn huge it may as well have been the ocean, and it didn’t trickle, it thundered, crashing into the dense reeds along the water's edge.  
And there were birds everywhere with long, thin legs and weirdly shaped beaks, striding around in the shallows. They were nothing like the gulls that circled the docks, larger and stranger and mad-eyed.  
A pair of small, squat looking birds waddle out onto the road ahead of us, making odd little hacking noises to each other. They waddle away on their webbed feet as the horse approaches, making irate little ack-ack-ack’s as they go.  
“I reckon they’re good eating,” Rosso sighs, watching them disappear into the reeds. He gives me an exasperated look. “Aww, come on, Barn! Whaddya want me to say? Sorry for being pissed at you for taking my trade?”  
I give him a humourless smile. “Why are you doing this? No one’s ever come back from Kingston Black.”  
“Yeah, well they never sent me there before,” he sniffs. “Just snivelling little cowards trying to get out of a one-way ticket on the Night Train. Me? I can take care of myself.”  
I snort. “So what? It’s your sense of civic duty?”  
“Yeah,” he gives me a sly grin. “And a thousand credits, paid in advance.”  
I sit up in my seat. “Are you shitting me? I’m getting six hundred, payable on return.”  
Rosso lets out a cackle. “You gotta negotiate, Barn. Fuck, Citrus musta seen you coming.”  
He chortles to himself and I sit back and sulk.  
He gives me as shove. “Ah, live and learn, kid.”  
“What? You gonna go halves with me?” I ask.  
“Not on your fucking life, boy.”  
I cough out a laugh, I can’t help it, and Rosso eases a little in his seat.  
“Brock,” he says, his eyes on the road ahead.  
“What? We on a promise now?” I huff, and he shakes his head.  
“You wish, boy! I got _standards_.”

We break for lunch in a clearing by the road. Brock lets the horse loose to crop at the grass and drink from the river. The horse clops into the water, the river smaller and shallower the further from the sea we go. I can see smooth stones and tiny fish through the clear water, far more like the rivers of my imaginings.  
We refill our canteens and eat sandwiches in the sun. Things are easier between us, and Brock seems happy to be out in the wilds and getting paid well for the privilege  
I watch as he goes down to the deeper water to try and catch some of the larger fish swimming there, and only succeeds in getting his trousers soaked up to the knee. He sprawls out on the grass to dry off, dozing in the sun while I stick to the dappled shade under a tree, my back against the smooth bark.  
I’m starting to fall asleep when Brock sits up with a grunt, and goes off to fetch the horse.  
He gives me a light kick to the leg as he walks past. “C’mon, on your feet.”  
I grumble but get up, brushing the dirt off my clothes and walking back to the cart.  
I throw my backpack onto the seat and we get the horse hitched up. Brock takes the reins as I slide into the set beside him, knocking my bag to the floor where it rests against my boot, and we’re on the move again.

I watch the sun move across the sky, lulled by the motion of the cart. The road gets rougher the longer we travel, patches of grass and saplings breaking through the road surface, but the cart is small and the road is wide, so it’s easy enough to navigate.  
“You think we’ll get there in time?” I ask.  
Brock nods. “Yeah, be an hours ride to get to the outskirts, should start seeing buildings again, keep an eye out for somewhere to spend the night.”  
I nod, we hadn’t seen a single sign of human life the whole time we’d been out, but then we were the only people in Jonagold given a permit to travel, and there were no other towns in these parts anymore.  
“Hang on,” I say suddenly. “We’re supposed to be going into the town today, get started on the prospecting.”  
Brock grins, sharp like a knife. “I’m not going to Kingston Black, that place is a death trap. You honestly think that after thirty years of sending suckers out there and not a one of them coming back that I’m gonna to risk it?” he shakes his head. “Camp out in the first place I see, head back at first light.”  
Oh, how could I have been so fucking stupid. Out in the middle of nowhere, no shelter for when night comes. Brock doesn’t need to cut my throat, the Howlers will do it for him.  
“Wait a minute,” I begin as he shakes the reins, spurring the horse to move faster.  
“Don’t worry,” he grins. “I’ll tell them you were brave, you died a hero. Shame to lose a pure, but they can always send someone back out here, scrape up what’s left of ya.”  
“Brock, just hold on-”  
He doesn’t even turn to face me, just thrusts out a hand and shoves me off the cart.

I land on my shoulder, and the shock jars through my whole body, snapping my head back. I manage to curl into a ball as I fall, at least, and don’t hit my head too badly. I scramble to my feet and the world tips and blurs for a moment, and I almost lose my lunch.  
I lurch after the horse and cart, but Brock shakes the reins and urges the horse into a gallop, and soon they are out of sight.  
I stumble along the road. My backpack is still on the cart, along with all my food and water. I want nothing more than to sit down in the road and have a good long scream. So I do.  
I sit on the concrete and swear as loudly as my lungs can manage, and come up with a few creative things that Brock can do to himself, both with and without apparatus.  
Then I’m out of ideas, so I stop screaming and have a bit of a cry instead.  
It’s about as useful as the screaming, but after a while I get up and go down to the river to wash my face and take a drink. The water is so cold it makes my teeth ache.  
I try to come up with a plan, but all I have is my knife and my ration book, not much to work with. I climb back up to the road and start walking, if only for the slight chance that Brock has crashed the cart and I can beat him to death before we both get taken by Night Gaunts.  
I walk, putting one foot in front of the other, and watch the sun creep down the sky.  
The sunset is beautiful, like it’s giving me a farewell performance before my horrible demise. There are shades of red I’ve never even seen before spread out before me, the edges fading into the colours beyond my perception. Even the sun is a shade I can see, just my side of orange. I stand in the road to watch as it slips past the horizon, then I pull my knife from its sheath and wait for the darkness to take me.

There is a distant rumbling from behind me as the light fades from the sky. I tighten the grip on my knife and turn to face it. I can’t hide and I can’t escape, and I’ve got no chance of beating it, but fuck it I’m going down fighting.  
I see it weaving about the road, a huge shape, as wide as I can stretch my arms from fingertip to fingertip and almost equal to me in height. It roars as it comes closer, low and guttural, but it’s the eyes that make my blood run cold. Two eyes, set far apart and forward facing. They glow. They shine with a bright, unnatural light, with no pupils or colour, save for a hint of red on their undersides, like they are bloodshot.  
It casts its light over me and pauses, and I have to raise a hand and shield my face. The light burns, makes my eyes water, and the creature lurches towards me.  
I take a step back, raise my knife and point the blade at the Night Terror as it slows, weaving carefully around the cracks in the road.  
It growls, a low purr, and comes closer.  
Something itches at the back of my thoughts, something familiar.  
The creatures comes to a stop just in front of me, the beams of its glowing eyes focused on my knees. It’s skin is shiny, like the shell of a beetle but rusted in places.  
Rust. It’s… made of metal?  
It creaks and lurches, and then a chunk of one side cracks open.  
_Shouldn’t it be covered in grass?_ I ask myself, bewildered.  
“Get in!” a familiar voice snaps as the creature purrs and lurches again.  
I lower my shaking hand.  
“Steve?”

I stumble to the open flap on the creature's side and peer in. Steve is sat in the body of the beast, hands gripping a wheel fixed to its insides. He waves his arm at me.  
“Come on, get in,” he hisses.  
I slide into the creature. The seat looks familiar, like the bench on a metro carriage.  
“Shut the door,” Steve adds, calmer now I’m in the machine.  
I pull the flap of metal close with a conveniently placed handle. It makes a soft thunk as it seals up against the main body of the creature. Steve pulls at a stick by his side and tugs the wheel, and the beast growls and rumbles forward.  
I take a close look at him, his face is pale, his lips bitten to a painful shade of red.  
“Steve,” I breathe, and my lungs feel like they’re about to burst.  
He flicks his eyes to me, then away again, keeping a close watch on the road. “It’s a truck. It’s a machine like a car, but bigger,” he says, carefully steering around a large tree growing in the road.  
“Truck,” I repeat. “Not a Howler.”  
Steve snorts. “There’s no such thing as Howlers.” he glances at me, and something in my expression makes his voice soften. “There’s no Boojums, no Terrors, nothing lurking in the darkness. Think about it.”  
I do think about it. Why would SHIELD lie about Howlers? Why put up fences around towns that let no one in or out? “Ghost stories,” I murmur.  
“Control through fear,” Steve leans forward, peering over the wheel as he tries to navigate his way around a wide crack in the road. “SHIELD builds walls around us, keeps us isolated, controls our movements. Then tells us that there are monsters beyond the wall, that they are the only ones that can keep us safe from the darkness.”  
“So we’ll do as we’re told,” I finish for him.  
It’s horrible. Horrible and effective.  
“Clint knows the histories, he says that before Insight they tried to control us by force. That they tried to rule, but people fought back. The second time they learned from their mistakes, that people won’t go by force, they have to be persuaded.” He glances at me again. “So the second time they used fear. They made up wars with other places, and terrors and monsters. Made people afraid to walk the streets at night, then offered to protect them.” he shrugs. “And that time it worked.”

I sit in silence, watching the two beams of light illuminate the road ahead.  
“So this is how you got to Egremont Russet,” I say finally.  
Steve gives me a guilty little smile. “I wanted to tell you.”  
“I wouldn’t have believed you,” It’s true, I wouldn’t have. “Why there? You could go anywhere, so why there?”  
Steve flushes pink. “Honestly?”  
“Yeah,” I sit back in the seat, and it’s really not that different from a carriage. Better even, warmer and drier.  
“I’m from Woolbrook Russet.”  
I let out a sharp bark of laughter. The town across the bay. There had been a petty feud between the two towns for as long as there had been people there. Hell, it wouldn’t be surprised if it had been running before Insight. No one knew what started it, but figured it must have been serious if it was still going.  
“Well I’ll be damned,” I laugh. “What’re you doing slumming it with the likes of me?”  
Steve gives me a crooked smile but doesn’t answer, his eyes on the road ahead.

I’m starting to doze, soothed by the warmth and the rumblings of the machine when Steve pulls over to where the trees make more of an effort to encroach on the concrete.  
I start and sit up, looking around to see where we are, but it’s endless darkness beyond the twin lights.  
“Railway line is just up ahead, we’ll follow it into town in the morning. Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two of walking.” He does something under the wheel, and the machine falls silent, the lights dim and go out.  
I bite back the urge to ask if it’s safe. Even in the dark he could probably still manage to thump me.  
Steve climbs over our seats and stretches out in the space behind it. “Get some sleep,” he orders and shuts his eyes.  
My whole life I’ve never been in the dark before, there’s always been a candle or a lantern to keep the night at bay.  
I swallow down my fear as I shift sideways on the seat and put my feet up, rest my chin on the back of the seat and listen for the sound of Steve’s breathing.  
“Room for one more back there?”  
I hear him snort softly. “Go to sleep, jerk.”  
I don’t go to sleep, but I do curl up on the seat, listening to the sound of him breathing as the night wraps around me like a blanket. There are no monsters, nothing with teeth and claws and red mouths waiting to kill us.  
Something strange happens. I rest my cheek against the worn, plastic smelling back of the seat and stare into the darkness until I see spots in front of my eyes. I shift in my seat and rub them with the heel of my hands, but when I look again the spots are still there.  
I let out a soft, confused sound and blink rapidly, slowly tipping my head to one side.  
“What are you doing?” Steve grumbles.  
I turn to the sound of his voice. “There’s something weird outside.”  
“What kind of weird?”  
I shake my head. “I don’t know, some sort of light? Like candles, but far away.”  
I hear Steve sit up and lean forward, sense more than see him rest his elbows on the seat between us as he looks out the glass front of the machine.  
“They’re stars,” he says softly. “Lights from far away.”  
They look like the paste jewellry my Ma wore on special occasions. Like scattered fragments of glass. “There’s so many of them.”  
I think about reaching out for him in the dark. About curling my hands around his narrow shoulders and bringing him closer. About how his mouth would feel against mine.  
We stare out at the distant stars until Steve lets out a soft sigh before slumping back down and curling up. Soon enough he falls asleep, his breathing slowing down and evening out.  
I watch the distant lights through the window. I swear one of them looks red. I wonder what colour the others are.

I wake up feeling cramped and sore and hungry. Though on the plus side from the way he jumps when I open my eyes I’m pretty sure Steve was watching me sleep. His ears go pink again and he suddenly takes an interest in moving. He climbs over the seat, a tin box in his hand, and drops down next to me, narrowly missing my legs as I drag them out of the way.  
“You hungry?” he asks, holding out the tin.  
“Yeah, you got any water?”  
I prise the lid open to reveal several flat squares that look somewhere between scones and biscuits as Steve rummages around the floor until he finds a canteen of tepid, slightly metallic tasting water to share.  
The squares are crumbly and sweetened with honey and Steve lets me have an extra one before he helps himself to one and puts the tin away.  
We climb out of the machine and Steve goes to the back, which opens out like a tiny shed. He opens up a bag he has stored in there, inside is a wooden box that I recognise as a Daguerreotype like the one they have at Carmine Island.  
“What’s that for?” I ask, poking at the bag while Steve slaps my hand away.  
“For taking pictures of course,” he huffs, carefully hefting the bag onto the roof and closing the vehicle door.  
I watch him walk around the vehicle, checking that he has everything before we leave, and feel a rush of something huge and overwhelming, like the flow of water from the river to the sea.  
“Steve,” I call out.  
“What?” He turns to me expectantly, and I know what the word I’m missing is.  
“You saved my life, I would’ve been mulch if you hadn’t showed,” I tell him, approaching slowly.  
Steve doesn’t back away, but flushes pink from the hollow of his throat to the tips of his ears. “Bucky,” he murmurs.  
I stand in front of him as he leans back against the machine, and I risk getting socked in the mouth when I lean in to kiss him.  
It’s a brief little thing, a press of lips and a sharp intake of breath before I pull away again.  
Both Steve’s hands dart out and grab me by the collar of my shirt, twisting up the fabric in his grip and I wait for the inevitable punch.  
He drags me down and crashes our mouths together.  
His lips are soft against mine, he parts them and our teeth clack together. My hands clutch at air for a moment before they grip him by the waist and I tilt my head, finding the angle that makes our mouths slot together. He tastes sweet and metallic, honey and bottled water, and I slip my tongue between his teeth. He lets out a soft noise, low in his throat and I swallow it up.  
Steve finally loosens his grip on my shirt, curling one hand around the nape of my neck, the other gripping the back of my jacket. My fingers dig into his hips, pulling our bodies closer as Steve licks into my mouth. The slide of his tongue against my teeth makes my body shake, and for a moment it’s only his hold on my jacket that keeps me upright.  
He pulls back slowly, reluctantly, and I chase after him, dotting kisses to the uptick at the corner of his mouth, the roundness of his lower lip, until he presses our foreheads together and I hear the catch in his breath.  
“Just so you know,” Steve murmurs, his breath warm and sweet. “If you call me ‘babydoll’ I will sock you one, I swear.”  
I chuckle in agreement. “Punk,” I murmur.  
Steve scrunches his eyes shut and huffs. “Jerk,” he whispers.


	10. Down There by the Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are so many things I want to tell him, but I’ll never get the chance. Instead I just squeeze his hand once, making sure the cord is safely in his grip, and hope that is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Raises head from bunker*  
> Honestly guys, you knew this was coming.
> 
> I can already hear the angry yowling...

I pull the bag off the roof of the machine and slip the strap over my shoulder, ignoring Steve’s grumble that he can manage fine and doesn’t need any help. I hold out my hand and, after a slight hesitation he takes it. His warm, calloused fingers thread between mine and he leads the way into the woods.  
The ground is soft underfoot, springy moss and fallen leaves with the occasional buried tree branch that snaps underfoot or threatens to trip you up or twist your ankle. I keep a close watch for Hydra buried in the undergrowth, as I’m better at spotting them than Steve is, though they are few and far between.  
In some ways, that makes them more dangerous, after a while of not seeing them you start to forget that you’re looking out for the damn things. Then there’s a flash of red out of the corner of your eye and you have a bit of a conniption.  
Steve seems to know where he’s going, following some hidden path through the trees until the woods ahead open up.  
It’s an artificial clearing, a long straight line cutting through the woods. The ground changes under our feet, the moss and leaf mould littered with small, irregularly shaped stones. I bend down to pick one up. It has a strange texture, filled with holes like a sponge, but hard and brittle. There is a glassy sheen to it, almost oily. I hold it out to Steve who examines it briefly before passing it back.  
“It’s clinker,” he says. “What’s left over when you burn coal. The stoker, he keeps the fire going on the train, scrapes the clinker out of the furnaces and throws it away.”  
He points to the ground as we reach the clearing and I see the railway track, clinker scattered alongside it. The train must have been taking this route for a long, long time to leave so much behind.  
“The line should lead us all the way to Kingston Black,” Steve explains as we step up onto the tracks. They are flat and level and have no Hydra on them, so we follow them westwards.  
I look down at the rails, heavy wooden beams laid out in a neat line on the levelled ground with thick iron rails on top, far enough apart for us to walk side by side.  
“It’s still being used,” I murmur.  
“What?” Steve tugs on my hand. “What’s being used?”  
“The railway,” I point down to the tracks. “The tracks, see? They’re shiny. If the line wasn’t being used they’d be all rusted up.”  
Steve hums curiously and looks at the route ahead of us. “That doesn’t make any sense. No train has been to Kingston Black in fifty years. It’s not on the way to anywhere, the route was abandoned.”  
He scuffs at the rail with his boot. The clinker around the line is recent, no grass has grown over it.  
“Strange,” I murmur, and we keep on walking.

The trees either side of the line start to thin out, and we see a platform up ahead.  
“Is this it?” I ask.  
Steve nods and we approach cautiously.  
The platform is raised a few feet from the rails and made of dull, uniform brick. There are remnants of a couple of wood and iron benches that have rotted away, nothing left but a few shreds of rust.  
The Stationmaster’s office, once a squat building made of the same bricks as the platform, is now a heap of rubble, the walls long since collapsed in on themselves.  
The waiting room is still standing, skulking on the other side of the passageway where travellers would have come through. The ticket booth is little more than a heap of stone with the remnants of a metal security grille poking out from the weathered bricks.  
I help Steve climb up onto the platform, letting go of his hand to scramble up after him. It feels strange not to hold his hand now, the absence makes my palm feel cold, my fingers clumsy. Steve wanders off to explore, and I shove my hands in my pockets instead of asking him to stay.  
I walk out of the station and take a look at Kingston Black. The street is deserted, the road surfaces crumbled and covered in tufts of flowering grasses, their heads nodding gently in the breeze. The warehouse across from the station is still standing, clinging vines crawling up its walls, its broken windows gape open like hungry mouths.  
I kick at a few loose paving flags and look back at the station. I can see Steve as he walks around the waiting room. The windows shattered, the door rotting away, the walls slowly crumbling.  
The whole place gives me the screaming abdabs.  
I walk back through the wreckage of the station and onto the platform to look further down the line. It curves to the left, past a warehouse surrounded by the remains of a metal fence. From the lack of trees on the obscured side of the building I guess that there is a storage yard or something back there. I jump down onto the tracks and walk over to take a closer look.  
Steve must have been keeping an eye on me as he calls out before I get very far and I turn back. I offer him the hand that he says he doesn’t need to help him down and we walk along the rails to the warehouse.  
I guess he’s as spooked as I am, because he presses against my side until i reach dowwn and take his hand in mine.  
The railway line splits at the warehouse, one line continuing west, the other leading into the building.  
The westbound line is corroded and dark red with rust. The line to the warehouse is bright and clean. We follow the bright line.

The track disappears under a set of heavy iron doors at the front of the warehouse. We walk around the side of the building, pushing past what remains of the fence to look for another way in, and see the train carriages.  
There are more than a hundred of them in decaying piles alongside the railway line. The oldest ones are nothing more than flaking layers of rust, carriage upon carriage falling into nothing. The grass and trees around the yard are a sickly colour on the cusp of my perception, the trees twisted out of shape and slowly dying.  
“What the hell?” I murmur.  
Steve’s hand slips out of my grip. “Why would they let this all go to waste?” he asks.  
I shake my head, following him along the endless lines of abandoned carriages.  
I stop in front of one of the newer ones. it’s still intact, the wood and metal frame solid, the shuttered windows sealed tight. It stands uprights, not tipped over or collapsing in on itself.  
It’s not like the carriage I rode in with Scott on the way to Jonagold, but I know it from somewhere. there is something about it that snags at my memory, something familiar.  
Standing on a bridge with my sister on the way to classes and looking down at the railway line, waiting for the train to go past.  
I slip the bag off my shoulder and set it on the grass, then reach up to the carriage door. There is an insignia there, a railway track in an unbroken circle. I press down the handle and push the door open.  
There are people inside.  
Maybe half a dozen of them, sat on the bench seats, their heads bowed as if they have fallen asleep. I climb up into the carriage. the walls inside are painted a colour outside of my perception, something that makes my eyes itch. i approach the nearest person, a man dressed in a suit. His lapel pin is green.  
“Excuse me?” I whisper, but he doesn’t answer. I reach out to tap him on the shoulder but he’s cold. he’s dead.  
They’re all dead. they all just sat down quietly on the train and died.

I hear Steve scream my name and turn to him. I feel odd. Slow and heavy, like I’m made of clay. he scrambles up into the carriage and grabs me by the shoulders, dragging me away from the dead man. It takes me a moment to realise that he’s speaking, though his voice is far away, I can’t make out what he’s saying. He looks so scared as he drags me to the door and shoves me out of the carriage.  
I land on my back, and Steve climbs down after me. There are clouds overhead, scudding across the sky. He’s still making noise, dragging something out of his pocket and snapping it open. He holds it in front of my face and I try to push it away. I want to see the sky.  
He forces my hands away and holds something up to my eyes. Two circles hinged together. The itching behind my eyes starts to fade, and I can hear Steve whispering to me, chanting my name under his breath as he kneels over me.  
“Please, Bucky. Come on, please,” he whimpers, over and over.  
I blink rapidly, my eyes watering. Aquamarine and emerald, the colours clash and make my ears throb.  
I cough and roll over, and throw up on the long grass.  
I put my hand to my face and it comes away wet. I realise how bad I’m shaking, how cold I am. Steve rubs his hands across my shoulders, murmuring softly as I cough and spit.  
“What the hell?” I shudder, my voice cracking.  
Steve pulls me into his arms, and I collapse against him. He manages to stay sat upright, crushing me in a fierce hug. I curl my arms around him, doing my best to reassure him even though I’m shivering, my voice cracking and stuttering.  
Steve loosens his grip long enough to reach over to the bag and pull out the canteen of water. He unscrews the cap and holds it to my lips. My hands are shaking too hard to grip anything, so he tips the water into my mouth in little sips until I turn my head away.  
I wipe my hands over my face and Steve holds the compact out for me again, making me look until I stopped trembling.

I finally push the compact away. “What the hell was that?” I rasp.  
Steve looks back at the carriage. “You couldn’t see it?”  
“See what?”  
“The yellow?” Steve keeps his hand on my shoulder, moving in slow circles as much for his own comfort as mine.  
I shake my head. “I don’t see yellow, I only see red.”  
He stares at me. “It’s mustard. The carriages are all painted with mustard.”  
Mustard, the poisonous colour. A yellow would recognise it, but not any other colour. They would sit patiently on the train while it rattled along the rails. They would die slowly, waiting for a destination that they would never see.  
I remembered my sister waving at a carriage as it travelled past, disappointed that the shutters were sealed tight and no one could see her waving the people inside off to their new lives.  
“The Night Train,” I whisper. If there was anything left in my stomach I would throw it up.  
The train that came once a month, taking people whose credit ratings had dropped below zero for rehabilitation, never to be seen again. I stare across the grass at the years, at the centuries worth of carriages left to decay, every one of them filled with people believing that they were going to a new life somewhere.

Steve reaches over to the bag and pulls out the Daguerreotype.  
“What are you doing?” I asks as I wrap my arms around myself.  
“Getting proof,” Steve grits out.  
He pulls a bundle of wood out of the bag that unfolds into a tripod, setting it up in front of the terrible carriage and fixing the box into position. The carriage door is still hanging open, the dead slumped in their seats, and he takes a picture, counting down the exposure on the piece of treated metal slotted inside the camera.  
The next picture he takes is of the heaps of carriages crumbling into the earth, the other piles of ancient carriages receding into the background.  
He sets another shot inside the open carriage, keeping his eyes covered as much as possible, but I still shudder and hold onto the compact, waiting for him stumble or show any signs of sickness.  
The final picture is of the insignia on the door. The Night Train. Steve packs away the Daguerreotype and comes back to where I’m sat. He takes the compact out of my hands and glances briefly at the colours before snapping it shut and sliding it back into his pocket. He leans against me and I wrap my arms around him.  
Steve was destined for the Night Train when I first came to Jonagold. I had been told time and time again that he was trouble, that it would be for the best. A fresh start.  
I tighten my grip around him. “We run before see you set foot on one of these things,” I whisper in his ear.  
He doesn’t answer, just presses his face to my throat and breathes, harsh and unsteady.

“We have to go back,” I say suddenly, breaking the silence.  
Steve shifts in my arms, turning his face away from my shoulder. I don’t know how long we had been sat there amongst the carriages, clinging to each other. Too long. Not long enough.  
“We have to tell everyone,” he agrees. He pushes out of my hold and gets to his feet. “Citrus is gonna be mad at you.”  
I force myself up, grabbing the strap of Steve’s bag and pulling it onto my shoulder.  
“Fuck him,” I mutter sourly. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”  
Steve slips his hand into mine and we walk back the way we came, down the shiny railway track and past the station for Kingston Black.  
“Do you think it really was the rot?” I ask as we walk past the derelict platform.  
“Honestly? I don’t think there’s any such thing as rot,” Steve replies. “I’ve never seen anyone come down with it, or known anyone who has.”  
“You think it’s a lie?”  
He shrugs. “What’s one more lie after everything you’ve seen?”  
We walk along the railway in silence as the trees slowly grow denser around us.  
“What are you thinking?” Steve asks me suddenly.  
I adjust the strap of his bag, fidgeting with it until Steve takes it from me with a huff. It’s not that far to walk so I don’t put up a fight.  
“I don’t know,” I say eventually. “Maybe half a plan. I’m working on it.”  
“We have to get these picture to the Resistance,” Steve brushes his fingers over the bag. “People have to know what happened. What’s been happening for years.”  
“Yeah. Everyone knows someone who took the Night Train, or came close to getting a ticket.” I think it over. “There are people in Jonagold who are in the Resistance, right? Sam and Maria? Could they get these pictures to Nick Fury?”  
Steve frowns at me. “You know about them?”  
“Yeah, I know. And he’s the leader of the Resistance, right?”  
Steve shakes his head. “Nick Fury isn’t the leader, the Resistance doesn’t have a leader. There’s a council, it’s not one person. Nick Fury is a place, it’s always moving so SHIELS can’t track it down.  
“What, like a train?”  
Steve smiles and looks up. I stop abruptly, dropping his hand. “Are you shitting me?”  
“It’s called a Quinjet,” Steve looks at me. “It’s a machine from before Insight, there are these reflective panels on its underside so you can’t see it, it’s almost invisible.  
“Well, that’s gonna make it easy to find,” I grumble.  
“You don’t find it, it finds you.”  
We pause and Steve takes a look around before pointing out a path moving away from the railway line.  
“That way,” he says, stepping down from the rails.  
I follow, keeping an eye out for Hydras ahead.

We pick our way through the woods, our feet sinking into the soft earth.  
“Your half a plan has a problem,” Steve says as he steps over a thick tree root. “Citrus thinks he’s found a pure in Jonagold.”  
I get the laces of my boots snagged on a branch and pause to shake it off. “That’s not gonna be a problem.”  
Steve stops to watch me tug at the branch, it’s covered in sharp thorns that are embedded in my shoelaces and I stop to prise it off.  
“A pure is a problem, if they get recruited by SHIELD they’ll be able to-”  
“SHIELD ain’t gonna get hold of the pure,” I sigh. My laces are shredded and have bits of thorn stuck in them.  
“Bucky, you can’t know that.”  
“It’s me,” I snap. Fuck, this is not how I meant to tell him. I let out a sigh. “It’s me. That’s why I volunteered, Citrus wanted to take me to White City.”  
“What?” Steve hisses, his face paling.  
“He wanted me to go with him to White City, but I managed to put him off by saying I’d go to Kingston Black. That’s why I’m here.”  
“But we didn’t go to Kingston Black,” Steve’s voice drops. “You’re the pure?”  
He sounds wounded. Betrayed.  
I nod. “Look, I’ll figure something out. But I swear to you I’m not going anywhere near White City.”  
I take a step towards him and Steve flinches back. “You think you can _put him off_?” he hisses.  
“Steve…”  
He lets out a soft, distressed sound. “You know about the truck. You know about the Resistance.”  
“Steve, I’m not gonna talk. Even if something happens and they catch me, I’m not going without a fight, and I’m not telling them a single damn thing.”  
“You won’t get a choice!” Steve doesn’t shout, that makes it so much worse. He sounds _scared_. “You think they’ll just ask you a few questions and when you refuse to answer they’ll just let you go?” He takes an unsteady step towards me. “You’ll be tortured. They’ll lime you, slice you up piece by piece until there’s nothing left.”  
I clench my fists. “I’m not gonna let that happen.”  
You’ll get us all mulched,” he gasps and claps a hand over his mouth. He shakes his head, and I can see a tinge of red in the corners of his eyes. “I can’t…”  
“Steve, listen to me,” I keep my voice hushed, moving until I’m within arms reach.  
Steve reaches out, and for a moment I think I’ve gotten through to him, but his hand drops and he snatches my knife out of its sheath.  
He holds it up, the blade pointing at me, shaking in his grip.  
I let out a whimper and he shivers, sucking in great gulps of air and the knife drops to the floor. He lets out a sudden, terrible sound, grief and anger and fear, and tears spill down his cheeks.  
I reach out to him, cupping his jaw in the palm of my hand, swiping the pad of my thumb against his damp cheek.  
“It’s okay,” I whisper as he leans into my hand. “We’ll figure it out.”  
Steve screws his eyes shut, and I see the resolve settle there, like in the moment before he throws a punch. He drags the back of his knuckles over his eyes, wiping away the tears and I let my hand drop to his shoulder. he clenches his jaw, his mouth a thin line that trembles at the edges.  
“Bucky,” he whispers, and it sounds like his heart is breaking.  
He lifts his hands and presses his palms against my chest. He looks behind me, but I don’t follow his gaze. I stroke my hands along his arms, gently cradling them.  
He looks up at me, and I wonder if his eyes are the same blue as mine.  
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and shoves.

I stagger backwards, fingers grasping at the sleeves of his coat, but he shrugs them off.  
I straighten up and stare at him, he looks so distraught that I take a half step towards him.  
Something wraps around my leg.  
I see a flash of red coming up from the mossy earth, wrapping itself around my waist. Hydra.  
I let out a scream, kicking out as another tentacle lashes out, dragging me to the splayed open petals half hidden in the fallen leaves. I fumble at my belt for my knife, but it’s on the ground where Steve is standing, out of the Hydra’s reach.  
“Steve!” I call out, but he doesn’t answer, forcing himself to watch as another tentacle catches my left wrist, snapping it down.  
I can make out the skull-shaped protrusion in the center of the circle of petals and kick at it with my free leg, stamping the heel of my boot down on it. The Hydra spasms and another tentacle wraps around my ankle. I’m trapped. A tendril wraps around my free arm, and the petals start to pull up around me.  
I let out another scream, I don’t care how badly it hurts, and dig my fingers into the tentacle working around my right arm. It hasn’t got a firm grip, slipping on the sleeve of my jacket, and I manage to wrestle free.  
I can’t escape, and Steve isn’t going to come and get me like he did in the carriage. But there is one thing I can do, one last thing. I punch through the petals, forcing my free arm through them and reach out, twisting my other hand around and catching the edge of the petal and pulling it back far enough for me to see.  
“STEVE!” I roar, and see him flinch, his arms wrapped around himself, not bothering to brush away his tears. I stretch my arm out towards him.  
“Steve, on my wrist there’s a yellow cord,” I yell. The Hydra thrashes around me, tentacles snatching at my arm, trying to pull me back in. “Take it!”  
A tentacle wraps around my head, covering my eyes. “You get into trouble, give it to a yellow, any yellow. they have to help you, even that bastard Mayor.”  
The Hydra tugs, the petals closing around me. “Please,” I call out. the tentacle wrapped around my head twists, snapping my head back.  
I feel something brush against my hand, and the Hydra tightens its grip around my left arm, dragging it up to my chest. Careful finger curl around my wrist and slide the yellow cord loose.  
I manage to grab hold of his fingers before he pulls away. There are so many things I want to tell him, but I’ll never get the chance. Instead I just squeeze his hand once, making sure the cord is safely in his grip, and hope that is enough.  
I let go, and the last tentacle wraps around my arm, twining around it and pulling it in.  
I don’t fight it, tugging my knees up and bringing my arms up to my chest as the petals slide into place around me and form a seal.

And that is how I died.  
It’s not how I wanted to go. Not how anyone would. But I’d seen far worse ways to die.  
And I knew the truth. Not for long, but it had been mine to carry for a little while. I loved and was loved. I saw the stars, lights from distant places.  
I hope he’s okay. I hope he makes it to the Resistance. I hope he forgives himself.  
I forgive him, of course I do. And I don’t regret a day of it, not one. I died to keep him safe.  
I died for love.


	11. All the World is Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Green. The moss is green, the grass, the trees. Even the banks of the river,” Steve says with a soft smile. “All the world is green.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amazing [Moony](https://cobaltmoonysart.tumblr.com) made this amazing art of Steve!  
> You should go tell her how much you love here (even though it's not as much as I do!)
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting, and thank you again to Kate for giving me the prompt, and Moony, for making me stick with it!
> 
>  

I don’t know how long I’m there, wrapped up in the coils of the Hydra. Long enough for my body to ache, at least. My legs start to cramp, my hands, bound up across my chest, prickle and itch and eventually go numb.  
There is a tearing sound, a blade sawing through tough fibres, and the Hydra convulses around me. The tentacles shudder and I struggle in its grip until I get my head free of the coils. With my eyes uncovered I can look down and see a split open up below me, see a hand reach in and force the gaping wound further apart. There is the flash of a blade, and I recognise my missing knife as it sinks into the protrusion at the centre of the Hydra's base.  
The Hydra spasms violently, smashing me into its sides. The petals clamp down, and for a moment I think I’m going to suffocate, if not from the folds pressing down on me then from the tentacles tightening around my chest, knotting around my neck.  
I look down and see the hand gripping the base of one of the tentacles, holding it steady while the knife hacks away at it, severing it in two. There is a cord tied around the wrist.  
_Steve._  
He moves quickly, grabbing the next tentacle and sawing at it, and the coil around my neck slackens and falls away. I suck in a gulp of humid, pungent air. The cloying, sweet smell of sap coating my tongue and making me gag.  
The Hydra shudders and finally goes limp. I kick my legs free of the tentacles, and Steve reaches through the gaping slit, grabs me by the ankles and pulls.  
I wrestle myself free of the coils, shoving against the deflating sides of the Hydra as Steve drags me out, tugging on the waistband of my trousers, the sleeve of my jacket, inch by inch until I’m free.

I sprawl out on my back on the woodland floor. The light, even filtered through the overhanging trees, is so painfully bright that I have to screw my eyes shut. The air is blissfully cold and smells like moss and earth, and I fill my lungs with it.  
Steve kneels over me, patting carefully at me as if to check that I’m alive, that I’m real.  
I crack one eye open. His face is pale and blotchy, his eyes bright and wet. He looks scared. Scared and ashamed and broken.  
“Hey, babydoll,” I manage to croak out.  
His expression crumples. “Bucky.”  
He crawls into my arms and tucks his face against my throat, his arms creep around my neck, brushing against the welts and bruises the Hydra left. I wrap my arms around him, careful at first, but tightening as he clings to me. He shudders, full body tremors that make his teeth chatter.  
I tuck my hands under his jacket, one under the collar, where I can press my fingers to the nape of his neck. The other slips under the hem of his shirt to skim across his hips, curve around the small of his back and follow the line of his spine. I press the heel of my hand to his vertebrae, moving it slowly up and down.  
“It’s okay,” I whisper, my lips in his hair. “I’m here, it’s okay.”  
Steve shakes his head. “No,” he whispers, his voice muffled against my skin. “It’s not.”  
I huff and tilt my head down far enough to brush a kiss against his temple. “I get why you did it, you wanted to keep everyone safe. SHIELD can’t be allowed to get their hands on a pure.”  
“But it’s _you_ ,” Steve whispers. “I would’ve lost you.” He tightens his grip around me, curling his fingers in my hair. “I can’t lose you.”  
“I ain’t lost,” I press a kiss to his cheek. “I’m right here.”  
He tips his head up, enough to meet in a brief, sweet kiss.  
“I’m sorry,” Steve murmurs against my mouth.  
I kiss him again, little sips of his lips. Fragile little things, too many to count. He kisses me in turn, one for every kiss I give him. He’s bold where I am wary, insistent when I hesitate, and I love him for it. For everything.

“You still got a plan?” Steve asks, curling up against my side.  
I shift awkwardly, there’s a tree root digging into my back, and as much as I want to stay where I am, I also want to wash the Hydra sap off me. Steve seems to be thinking the same thing, as he sits up and stretches, massaging the crick in his neck.  
“We go back to Jonagold,” I say, forcing myself up. My whole body is one big ache. Even my lips are sore, though that isn’t so bad.  
“Jonagold?” Steve looks surprised. “But Citrus is there, won't that be a problem?”  
I hold out my hands until Steve reaches for them and lets me pull him to his feet. “You leave him to me. If he causes trouble I’ll deal with him.” I brush my finger over the cord around Steve’s wrist. “Or we can dangle him over a Hydra?”  
Steve lets out a startled little snort. I keep a hold of his hands on the off chance that the next thing I say gets me a punch.  
“Also, I thought we could go down to the records office, fill out a few forms, get Maria to countersign them.”  
“Yeah?” Steve asks dubiously. “What for?”  
I give him a wary smile. “I think we should get married.”  
He doesn’t punch me, so I figure that’s a good start.  
“Married?” he doesn’t pull away. “This part of your half-a-plan?”  
I shake my head. “There are other reasons to ask.”  
Steve smiles, sudden and warm and bright. “Okay.”  
There’s no negotiations, no contracts to be drawn up, no handing over of ration books to check each others score, no transfer of credits. Just a question and an answer, and his hands in mine.

Steve leads the way through the trees, following some hidden path towards the interstate.  
“How do you know which way to go?” I ask him, pulling aside a thorny branch.  
He glances at me, and I see him silently remind himself that I can only see red, and it’s strange how a thing that was once seen as a desirable trait is actually a hinderance.  
“The moss,” he taps at the springy growth under our feet with the toe of his boot. “The bark on the trees. The sides facing the Interstate are paler.”  
He points to one side of a tree trunk, then the other, but I can't see any difference.  
“What colour are they?” I wonder.  
“Green. The moss is green, the grass, the trees. Even the banks of the river,” Steve says with a soft smile. “All the world is green.”  
We keep walking, and Steve gives my fingers a squeeze. “You planning on sharing the rest of this plan of yours?”  
I shrug, keeping pace with him. “You know about Pearmain? The town without colour?”  
He nods. “Yeah, it’s a day's ride south of here.”  
“Well, we do that with Jonagold.”  
Steve frowns at me. “Pearmain was abandoned, lost to the rot. The Resistance occupies the ruins. Jonagold has factories, it has docks. It’s not the same.”  
“No, but everyone there is…” I hesitate, trying to put it into words. “We’re rejects, we don’t fit in with the chromatic order. You have any idea how many people are with the Resistance in town? Or are in support of it? How many people are sick of SHIELD?”  
I had read the minutes of every town meeting for the last five years, read all the complaints about how the majority of the towns produce - render, crops, fishing, salvage - were sent straight to White City, and barely anything was sent back in return, not even a new coat of paint for the town hall. Just apologies for how stretched resources are, and empty words about striving for future generations.  
“How many other towns think the same? Are sick of rendering their dead to keep themselves fed, to keep their lamps burning while their harvest goes to White City? How many are just waiting for a reason to fight back?”

A reason to turn on the chromatic order. One that united the colours and the greys. A truth that would make the world shake.  
Steve looks down at his bag. “The Night Train.”  
“They need to know what the chromatic order has been doing all this time. That they don’t have the resources to counter a rebellion, not if enough of us make a stand.”  
Steve looks doubtful. “And how are you planning on doing that?”  
“Abraham.”  
Steve stops in his tracks. “Bucky?”  
“Listen,” I insist. “He was a dissenter, he questioned authority and got reassigned. You honestly think if we show him these pictures he won’t help us?”  
Steve chews on his lip and shakes his head. “He’d be outraged.”  
“He should be outraged!” I let out a breath. “We use the printing press. We write it down, the lies that SHIELD have been telling us all, what we saw in Kingston Black, and we print it. As many copies as we can make. Anyone in Jonagold who sees it and still doesn’t want to join us…” I shake my head. “Well, they can leave. I don’t know, I haven’t figured that out.”  
Steve is silent for a painfully long time, frowning into the middle distance. “The greys would be on our side,” he says eventually. “There are some who are… accustomed to the way things are, but the rest...” He nods to himself, and I can almost see him filling in the gaping holes in my half-plan. “We can shut down the factories, seal off the docks. There’s nothing SHIELD can threaten to withhold from us that we can’t manage without.”  
Steve shakes his head and starts walking, tugging me along with him. The trees come to an abrupt end and we suddenly step back on the Interstate. Steve looks up and down the road until he spots the machine we came in a little way down from us.  
“We’re protected if SHIELD did try anything, the woods are full of Hydra. The gate is locked and the boundary patrolled,” I point out. “That just leaves us with the railway.”  
Steve nods, still deep in thought, making plans. “We need to get the story further than Jonagold though. We can turn this town, but how do we get to the other ones?”  
Steve lets go of my hand as we reach the machine. He cracks open the side of it and carefully places his bag in the back. He grabs his bottle of water and unscrews it, taking a swallow before passing it to me.  
“The truck isn’t enough,” he takes the water bottle back when I offer it and takes another mouthful before screwing the cap back on and tossing it onto the seat. “Horse and cart is too slow. We need to be fast, cover a lot of distance, spread the word as far as possible.”  
There’s something in his voice, something that makes me shiver like there’s lightning crackling down my spine. Thunder in my veins.  
Steve turns to me, his eyes wide. “We need to steal a train.”

\--------------------------------

“Whoa there, Nacho!”  
Luis pulls on the reins and the horse comes to a stop. He whickers, flicking his tail impatiently as I climb down from the cart. Luis passes me the bags and I sling mine over my shoulder, keeping hold of thee other one. Clint scrambles down after me, the bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back rattling as he jumps down. Luis shouts a goodnight to us both and Clint waves the brace of, what were they called? Coney? at him cheerfully.  
“You want one of these?” he asks, holding up the skinned, headless creatures that are a colour on the edges of my perception. Their guts hadn’t been, and I hope I never have to watch him decapitate and gut anything again. It’s not the smell or being squeamish, it’s the colour that I can’t stand.  
“Sure, what do I do with it?” I say as he unfastens one from his bundle and hands it over.  
“Throw it in the oven, eat it when it stops looking pink but before it starts looking black.”  
“Har fucking har,” I grumble, handing him his bag.  
Natasha’s door cracks open, spilling light out onto the street and she peers out at us. “You two going to be out there all night?” she calls, arching an eyebrow at Clint.  
He gives me a wink and trots over to their house, calling out increasingly ridiculous endearments. I chuckle at the pair of them and push my front door open. I wipe my boots on the doormat and nudge the door shut with my hip.  
“Steve?” I call out as I walk through to the kitchen.  
There’s no sign of him, so I check the stove and throw a few logs from the stack into the firebox.  
I go to the sink to wash the Hydra sap off my hands, easing off my ring and placing it carefully on the side before grabbing the soap and running my hands under the tap. I give my knife a clean while I’m at it, before sliding the ring back on my finger and drying my hands on a cloth.  
I find a good sized tray in one of the cupboards and blow the dust off before dropping the coney into it with a wet thunk. Hmm. I check the pantry, and find a couple of potatoes and carrots. I chop them into large chunks and throw them in with the coney, then toss the tray in the oven before heading out back. If Steve isn’t out working, he’ll be there.

When I first came to Jonagold the back garden had been a dull patch of grass. Steve had been pretty quick to turn it into a good sized vegetable patch, enough to keep us fed and leftovers for trading with too.  
It’s not all beans and potatoes though, there are flowers everywhere. The back wall is a mass of leaves and buds that will soon burst into bloom. The roses will be a deep wine red that won’t give me a headache when I look at them, I remember the flowers from last summer, when I dug them out of a municipal garden in Ashmead. I got myself scratched to pieces by the thorns and was sure they wouldn’t make the journey back, but they have thrived under Steve’s care.  
I find Steve by the pumpkin patch, sat on the bench with his workbook in his lap, his tin of watercolours propped on his knee and a jar of muddy looking water balanced on the arm of the bench. I lean over his shoulder to see what he’s painting. Broad leaves and swelling fruit in colours that are beyond me. He uses colours sparingly when he paints, and red in the palest wash. I’m never quite sure if it’s because he doesn’t want to use up the colours, or if it’s how he sees the world.  
“Hey, jerk,” he murmurs, lifting his head up for a kiss.  
“Punk,” I answer, giving it gladly.  
I sit down next to him, careful not to jostle his work, and watch as he fills his brush with colour and spreads it across the page.  
“Good day out there?” Steve asks, rinsing out his brush and dabbing it into another tablet of colour.  
I know Steve worries when I’m out on scavenging runs or hunting trips. And yeah, I’d rather be home but I’m the best at spotting Hydra, and I never have to work alone.  
“Yeah, pretty good,” I lean back. “Got some scrap iron we can work with, some gear the fisher folk were needing. Clint managed to bag something called coney, so dinner’s in the oven.”  
Steve’s mouth twitches up at that. “You do spoil me.”  
“Yeah, I’m nice like that.” I watch the insects buzzing around the flowers. We have a whole nest of them living in a box up by the potatoes. Once a week we put on our thickest gloves and tuck our trousers in our socks and open it up for a look. A couple of times a year we get honey and wax, and I figure they’ve earned the right to give us a few stings there. What we do to them is a little too close to what we used to do with the greys, but Steve says it’s mutually beneficial and that makes it alright.

I stifle a yawn and rest my head on Steve’s shoulder. “What about you?”  
Steve hasn’t exactly got a job title. He refused the role of Mayor when it was offered. Whatever it is, it involves more meetings and negotiations and trade agreements. And occasionally punching people when they start throwing their weight around.  
He’s just… Steve. The town Steve.  
He rinses out his brush and sets it in the tray, looking over his picture with a critical eye.  
“We’ve got some refugees coming up from Grenadine, should be here in a few days.”  
“Yeah?” I let out a soft noise of surprise. “You’d think that kinda thing would’ve petered out by now.”  
Steve shrugs. “It’s a big country, takes a long time to walk across it.”  
“True,” I straighten up and scrub fingers through my hair. “Still, you think they’d take the train.”  
Steve hums. “Well, a lot of folks are understandably put off by trains. Think they’re bad luck.”  
Yeah, well I guess we were to blame for that one.  
I pat Steve on the knee. “You coming in? I’m gonna see how badly burnt dinner is.”  
He huffs a soft little laugh and gets up, setting his picture on the bench to finish drying while we eat.  
I sling my arm around his shoulder and he reaches up to tangle our fingers together, his eyes bright.  
They are blue, like mine.


End file.
